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MOHAMMED 



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MOHAMMEDANISM. 



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MOHAMMEDANISM: 

LECTURES 

DELIVERED AT THE 

ROYAL INSTITUTION OF GREAT BRITAIN 
IN FEBRUARY and MARCH, 1874. 

By R. BOSWORTH £MITH, M.A., 

ASSISTANT MASTER IN HARROW SCHOOL, LATE FELLOW OF TRINITY COLLEGE, OXFORD. 



WITH AN APPENDIX 

CONTAINING 

EMANUEL DEUTSCH'S ARTICLE ON "ISLAM." 




NEW YORK: 

HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS, 

FRANKLIN SQUARE. 

1875- 



^\^ 



h 



UXORI ME^E, 



NULLIUS NON LABORIS PARTICIPI, 

HUJUSCE PR^ESERTIM OPUSCULI INSTIGATRICI ET ADMINISTR^E, 

STUDIORUM COMMUNITATIS 

HAS, QUALESCUNQUE SINT, PRIMITIAS 

D E D I C O. 



PREFACE. 



The substance of these Lectures was written 
early in 1872 : they were originally intended 
only for a select audience of friends at Harrow, 
but on the suggestion of some of those who 
heard them they were afterward considerably 
enlarged, and were delivered before the Royal 
Institution of Great Britain in the months of 
February and March, 1874. 

They are an attempt, however imperfect, with- 
in a narrow compass, but, it is hoped, from a 
somewhat comprehensive and independent point 
of view, to render justice to what was great in 
Mohammed's character, and to what has been 
good in Mohammed's influence on the world. 
To original Oriental research they lay no claim, 
nor indeed to much originality at all — perhaps 
the subject hardly now admits of it; but, thanks 



T iii PREFACE. 

to the numerous translations of the Koran into 
European languages, and to the great works of 
Oriental scholars, such as Caussin de Perceval, 
Sprenger, Muir, and Deutsch, the materials for 
forming an impartial judgment of the Prophet 
of Arabia are within the reach of any earnest 
student of the Science of Religion, and of all who 
care, as those who have ever studied Mohammed's 
character must care, for the deeper problems of 
the human soul. 

The value of the estimate formed of the in- 
fluence of Mohammedanism on the world at 
large must, of course, depend upon such a mod- 
icum of general historical knowledge, and such 
catholic sympathies, as the writer has been 
able, amid other pressing duties, to bring to his 
work. The only qualification he would vent- 
ure to claim for himself in the matter is that 
of a sympathetic interest in his subject, and of a 
conscientious desire first to divest himself of all 
preconceived ideas, and then by a careful study 
of the Koran itself, and afterward of its best ex- 
pounders, to arrive as nearly as may be at the 
truth. How vast is the interval between his 



PREFA CE. j x 



wishes and his performance the author knows 
full well, and any one who has ever been fairly 
fascinated with a great subject will know also; 
for he will have felt that to have the will is not 
always to have the power, and that the framing 
of an ideal implies the consciousness of failure 
to attain to it. 

A Christian w 7 ho retains that paramount al- 
legiance to Christianity which is his birthright, 
and yet attempts, without favor and without 
prejudice, to portray another religion, is inevita- 
bly exposed to misconstruction. In the study of 
his subject he will have been struck sometimes 
by the extraordinary resemblance between his 
own creed and another, sometimes by the sharp- 
ness of the contrast ; and, in order to avoid those 
misrepresentations, w^hich are, unfortunately, nev- 
er so common as where they ought to be un- 
known — in the discussion of religious questions 
— he will be tempted, in filling in the por- 
trait, to project his own personal predilections 
on the canvas, and to bring the differences into 
full relief, while he leaves the resemblances in 
shadow. And yet a comparison between two 

A 2 



x PREFACE. 

systems, if it is to have any fruitful results, if 
its object is to unite rather than divide, if, in 
short, it is to be of the spirit of the Founder of 
Christianity, must, in matters of religion above 
all, be based on what is common to both. There 
is, in the human race, in spite of their manifold 
diversities, a good deal of human nature ; enough, 
at all events, to entitle us to assume that the 
Founders of any two religious systems which 
have had a great and continued hold upon a 
large part of mankind must have had many 
points of contact. Accordingly, in comparing, 
as he has done to some extent, the founder of 
Islam with the Founder of Christianity — a com- 
parison which, if it were not expressed, would 
always be implied — the author of these Lec- 
tures has thought it right mainly to dwell on 
that aspect of the character of Christ, which, 
being admitted by Mussulmans as well as Chris- 
tians, by foes as well as friends, may jDossibly 
serve as a basis, if not for an ultimate agreement, 
at all events for an agreement to differ from 
one another upon terms of greater sympathy 
and forbearance, of understanding and of respect. 



PREFACE. x j[ 

That Islam will ever give way to Christianity 
in the East, however much we may desire it, 
and whatever good would result to the world, 
it is difficult to believe; but it is certain that 
Mohammedans may learn much from Christians 
and yet remain Mohammedans, and that Chris- 
tians have something at least to learn from 
Mohammedans, which will make them not less 
but more Christian than they were before. If 
we would conquer Nature, we must first obey 
her; and the Fourth Lecture is an attempt 
to show, from a full recognition of the facts 
of Nature underlying both religions — of the 
points of difference as well as of resemblance 
— that Mohammedanism, if it can never become 
actually one with Christianity, may yet, by a 
process of mutual approximation and mutual 
understanding, prove its best ally. In other 
words, the author believes that their is a unity 
above and beyond that unity of Christendom 
which, properly understood, all earnest Christians 
so much desire: a unity which rests upon the 
belief that " the children of one Father may wor- 
ship him under different names ;" that they may 



x ii PREFACE. 



be influenced by one spirit, even though they 
know it not ; that they may all have one hope, 
even if they have not one faith. 



Harrow, April 15, 1873. 



I have to return my best thanks to my friend Mr. Ar- 
thur Watson, for a careful revision of my manuscript, 
and for several valuable suggestions. 

It may be serviceable to English readers to mention 
the more accessible works upon the subject, to the writers 
of which I desire here to express my general obligations, 
over and above the acknowledgment, in the text, wherever 
I am conscious of them, of special debts. I am the more 
anxious to do this fully here, as, while I am quite aware 
that I could not have written on this subject at all with- 
out making their labors the basis of mine, I have yet in 
the exercise of my own judgment often been obliged to 
criticise their reasonings and their conclusions. I can 
only hope that even where I have ventured to express a 
somewhat vehement dissent from my authorities, they will 
kindly credit me with something at least of the verecunde 
dissentio which becomes a learner, and of the zeal for 
truth, or for his idea of it, which becomes a writer, how- 
ever diffident of himself, on a great subject. 

"The Koran," translated by Sale, with an elaborate Introduction and 
full Notes drawn from the Arabic Commentators (1734). 



PREFACE. x iii 

"The Koran," translated by Savary (1782), also with instructive ex- 
planatory Notes. 

"The Koran," translated by Rodwell (1861): the Suras arranged, as 
far as possible, chronologically. 



Gagnier's "Vie de Mahomet " (1732) ; drawn chiefly from Abul Eeda 
and the Sonna. 

Gibbon's "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire;" Chapters L., LI., 
LII. (1788). A most masterly and complete picture. 

Weil's " Mohamed der Prophet " (1845). Able and to the point. 

Caussin de Perceval's "Essai sur l'Histoire des Arabes,"etc. (1847), 
gives particularly full information upon the obscure subject of early 
Arabian history, and is written from an absolutely neutral point of 
view. 

Sprenger's "Life of Mohammad," Allahabad, 1851; and his greater 
work, 'Das Leben und die Lehre des Mohamad' (1851-1861), the most 
exhaustive, original, and learned of all, but by no means the most impar- 
tial: he is often, as I shall point out on one or two occasions in the 
notes, flagrantly unfair to Mohammed. 

Sir William Muir's "Life of Mahomet" (1858-1861). Learned and 
comprehensive, able and fair ; though its scientific value is somewhat im- 
paired by theological assumptions as to the nature of inspiration, and by 
the introduction of a personal Ahriman, which, while it is self-contradic- 
tory in its supposed operation, seems to me only to create new difficulties, 
instead of solving old ones. 

"The Talmud," an article in the Quarterly Review (October, 1867); 
"Islam," an article in the Quarterly Review (October, 1869): both full 
of most recondite Eastern learning. Had the lamented author lived to 
finish the work he shadowed forth in the last of these, he would probably 



Xiv PREFACE. 



have drawn a juster and more vivid picture of Islam as a whole than has 
ever yet been given to the world. 



For less elaborate works : 

Ockley's "History of the Saracens from 632-705." Picturesque; deal- 
ing largely in romance (1708-1718). 

Hallam's " Middle Ages," Chapter VI. (1818) ; Milman's "Latin Chris- 
tianity," Book IV., Chapters I. and II. (1857) ; both good samples of the 
high merits of each as an historian. 

Carlyle's " Hero as Prophet " (1846). Most stimulating. 

Washington Irving's "Life of Mahomet " (1 819). The work of a nov- 
elist, but strangely divested of all romance. 

Lecture by Dean Stanley in his " Eastern Church " (1862). Has the pe- 
culiar charm of all the author's writings. Catholic in its sympathies, and 
suggestive, as well from his treatment of the subject as from the place the 
author assigns to it on the borders of, if not within, the Eastern Church 
itself. 

Barthelemy St. Hilaire's " Mahomet et le Koran " (1865), a comprehen- 
sive and very useful review of most of what has been written on the subject. 



On the general subject of Comparative Religion : 

" Religions of the World, " by E. D. Maurice (1846). Perhaps of all his 
writings the one which best shows us the character and mind of the man. 

"Etudes d'Histoire Religieuse," by Renan (1858). Ingenious and fas- 
cinating, but not always, nor indeed often, convincing. 

"Les Religions et les Philosophies dans l'Asie Centrale,"by Gobineau 
(1866), gives the best account extant of Babyism in Persia. 

" Chips from a German Workshop" (1868), and "Introduction to the 
Science of Religion " (1873), by Max Muller. Unfortunately the author 



PREFACE. 



XV 



says very little about Mohammedanism, but from him I have derived some 
very valuable suggestions as to the general treatment of the subject. Per- 
haps it is well that the extraordinary learning and genius of Mr. Max 
Miiller should be given mainly to subjects which are less within the reach 
of ordinary European students than is Islam, but it is impossible not to 
wish that he may some day give the world a " Chip " or two on the Relig- 
ion of Mohammed. 



For books which throw light on the specialties of Mohammedanism in 
different countries : 

Al-Makkari's " History of the Mohammedan Dynasties in Spain" 
(Eng. Trans.). 

Sir John Malcolm's "History of Persia" (1815;. 

Conde's " History of the Dominion of the Arabs in Spain " (1820-21). 

Crawford's "Indian Archipelago " (1820). 

Colonel Briggs's "Rise of the Mohammedan Power in India," trans- 
lated from the Persian of Ferishta (1829). 

Sir Stamford Raffles's " History of Java " (2d edition), (1830). 

Burckhardt's " Travels in Arabia " (1829). 

Caille's "Travels through Central Africa to Timbuctoo" (1830). 

Burckhardt's "Notes on the Bedouins and Wah-Habees" (1831). 

Lane's " Modern Egyptians " (1836). 

Burton's "Pilgrimage to Mecca and Medina" (1856). 

Barth's " Travels in Central Africa " (1857). 

Waitz's " Anthropologic der Naturvolker " (Leipsig, 1860). 

Lane's "Notes to his Translation of the Thousand and One Nights" 
(new edition, edited by E. S. Poole, 1865). 

Elphinstone's "History of India" (3d edition), (1866). 

Palgrave's ' < Arabia " (1867). 

"Our Indian Mussulmans," by W. W. Hunter (1871). 



xv i PREFACE, 

Burton's " Zanzibar " (1872). 

Shaw's "High Tartary, Yarkand, and Kashgar " (1871). 

Palgrave's " Essays on Eastern Subjects " (1872). 

"Report of the General Missionary Conference at Allahabad " (1873). 

Three articles in periodical literature, besides " Islam " mentioned 
above, are of very high merit, and have furnished me, in enlarging my 
work, with some matter for reflection or criticism : 

" Mahomet," National Review (July, 1858). 

"The Great Arabian," National Review (October, 1861). 

" Mahomet," British Quarterly Review (January, 1872). 



Among other works which I regret I have not been able to consult may 
be mentioned : 

Gerock's "Versuch einer Darstellung der Christologie des Koran" 
(Homburg, 1839). 

Freeman's "Lectures on the History and Conquests of the Saracens" 
(1856). 

Geiger's " Was hat Mohammed aus dem Judenthume aufgenommen ?" 

Noldeke's " Geschichte des Qorans." 

"Essays on the Life of Mohammed and subjects subsidiary thereto," 
by Syed Ahmed Khan Bahador (1870). 

"A Critical Examination of the Life and Teachings of Mohammed," 
by Syed Ameer AH Moulla (1873). 

The last two books I had not heard of when I wrote the 
substance of these Lectures ; and in enlarging my work, I 
have purposely abstained from consulting them, as I have 
been given to understand that from a Mohammedan point 
of view they advocate something of the spirit and arrive 
at some of the results which it had been my object to 



PREFACE. xv ii 

urge from the Christian stand-point. I would not, of 
course, venture to compare my own imperfect work, de- 
rived as it is in the main from the study of books in the 
European languages, and from reflection upon the materi- 
als they supply, with works drawn, as I presume, directly 
from the fountain-head. But if the starting-points be dif- 
ferent, and the routes entirely independent of each other, 
and yet there turns out to be a similarity in the results 
arrived at, possibly each may feel greater confidence that 
there is something of value in his conclusions. 



CONTENTS. 



LECTURE I. 

Introductory. 

Comparative Religion. — Historical Religions of the World Moral in their 
Origin, not Theological. — Judaism; Buddhism; Christianity. — Re- 
ligion in Greece ; Question of Originality of Mohammedanism. — Two 
Views of Religion. — Obscurity of all Origins, above all of Religion. — 
Dim Knowledge of Founders of Other Religions ; Full Knowledge of 
Mohammed. — Bible and Koran Contrasted. — Difficult in Other Creeds 
to Distinguish the Foundation from the Superstructure ; Possible in 
Islam. — Problems Connected with Mohammed's Character. — Survey 
of the Saracen Conquests, and of what Mohammedanism Overthrew. — 
Its Position now — is it Losing or Gaining Ground? — China; East 
Indian Archipelago ; Africa — Extraordinary Success of its Missiona- 
ries there now. — Its Progress in the African Continent Traced Histor- 
ically. — What it has Done for Africa, and what Christians have Done. 
— Its Probable Future in Africa. — Armenia and Koordistan — Revival 
there. — India; Few, if any, Converts to Christianity. — Causes ordi- 
narily Suggested for its Success Reviewed. — National and Religious 
Prejudices Stand in Way of a Fair Judgment. — Principles which 
must Guide Investigation. — Do Religions Differ in Kind? — Sacred 
Books and their Influence. — Missionary Work ; its Limits and Legit- 
imate Objects. — Can the World be Christianized ? Page 25 

LECTURE II. 

Mohammed. 

History of Opinions about Mohammed : The Troubadours ; the Middle 
Ages; the Reformers ; Biblical Commentators ; Gaguier; Sale; Gibbon; 



xx CONTENTS. 

Carlyle ; Other Modern Writers. — Arabia before Mohanmed ; its Re- 
ligion; its Social Condition; War; Poetry; Plunder; Chivalry.-— 
Could Mohammedanism have been Predicted? — Was it the Voice of 
the Spirit of the Time, or of Individual Religious Genius ? — Moral and 
National Upheaval. — Pre-Mohammedans. — Youth of Mohammed; 
his Call to be Prophet, and its Phenomena ; his Long Struggles. — The 
Hegira. — Sincerity of Mohammed Examined. — His Personal Charac- 
teristics. — The Prophetic Office. — Mohammed's Life at Medina. — His 
Faults. — His Supposed Moral Declension Examined. — Was he Consist- 
ent ? — Did he Use the Koran for his Private Purposes ? — Illustrations. 
— The Exact Nature and Limits of his Mission ; Illustrations. — His 
Death Page 80 

LECTURE III. 

Mohammedanism. 

Essence of Mohammedanism ; Claims to be Universal ; How far Bor- 
rowed from Jews. — Judaism and Christianity as Known to Arabs. — 
Mission of Mohammed. — Other Articles of Faith: Practical Duties 
Enjoined ; Pilgrimage, its Use and Abuse ; How far Alien to Mo- 
hammedanism and to Christianity. — The Kaaba ; the Hadj. — Dictum 
of Dr. Deutsch. — The Talmud and its Influence. — Mohammed's Con- 
cessions to the Jews, and his Efforts to Gain them over.— Why he 
Failed. — The Koran : its Characteristics ; its History ; Influence ; 
Variety; Poetry. — Relation of Mohammed to Miracles, Compared 
with that of Christ. — The Miraculous Generally. — Fatalism.— What 
the Koran Says. — Opposite Effects of the Same Doctrine. — Moham- 
med's Views of Prayer, Predestination, and Free-will. — Wars of Is- 
lam — an Essential Part of the System or not ? — How Accounted for. 
— Connection of the Spiritual and Temporal Power — in Eastern Chris- 
tendom, in Western Christendom, and in Islam. — Character of Early 
Mohammedan Wars. — Religious Enthusiasm. — The Crusades. — Re- 
sults of Mohammedan Conquests. — Literature, Science, and Civiliza- 
tion. — Attitude of Christianity and Christians toward Religious Wars. 
— Morality of War. — What Wars are Christian ?. Page 130 



CONTENTS. xx [ 

LECTURE IV. 

Mohammedanism and Christianity. 

The Future Life of Mohammedanism ; of Other Religions. — Use Moham- 
med made of Heaven and Hell ; Their Legitimate Use. — Does Mo- 
hammedanism Encourage Self-indulgence ? — Morality of Mohammed- 
anism. — Mohammed's Attitude toward Existing Institutions Compared 
with that of Other Founders : Solon ; Moses ; Christ. — How he Dealt 
with Polygamy, Slavery, the Poor, and the Orphan ; with the Lower 
Animals ; with Moral Offenses. — How ought Christianity to Regard 
Mohammedanism? — How does it? — Three Monotheistic Creeds; 
Heroes Common to All. — Spirituality of Each. — Mohammed and Mo- 
ses Compared. — Iconoclasm. — Reverence for Christ. — Three Rea- 
sons Suggested for Mohammed's Rejection of Christianity. — Moham- 
med's Views of Christ ; of the Virgin Mary ; of the' Trinity ; of the 
Crucifixion; of God. — Lessons to be Learned from them. — Has Mo- 
hammedanism Kept Back the East by Hindering the Spread of Chris- 
tianity ? — Is it a Curse or a Blessing to the World at Large ? — Limits 
of Mohammedanism and of Christianity. — Aspects of Mohammedan- 
ism in Different Countries : Africa ; Persia ; India ; Turkey ; Spain. — 
Contrast between Christianity and Mohammedanism and their Pound- 
ers. — Is the East Progressive or not? — Corruptions of Mohammedan- 
ism Illustrated by other Religions. — Necessity of Revival in all Relig- 
ions. — Wahhabees in Arabia and in India. — Revival in Eastern Ana- 
tolia. — Limits to the Influence of the West on the East. — Despotism ; 
Polygamy ; Slavery ; the Slave-trade. — Is Mohammedanism Reconcil- 
able with the Highest Civilization? — With Christianity? — Modifications 
Possible or Necessary. — Mohammed's Place in History Page 188 

Appendix to Lecture 1 267 

Appendix to Lecture III 27G 

ISLAM. By Emanuel Deutsch 281 



LECTURES 



DELIVERED AT THE 



ROYAL INSTITUTION OF GREAT BRITAIN 

IN FEBRUARY and MARCH, 1874. 



LECTURE I. 



Delivered at the Royal Institution, London, 
February 14, 1874. 



INTRODUCTORY. 

Sua cuique genti religio est, nostra nobis. — Cicero. 
'AM' iv iravTi 'i$vu 6 (pofiovfievog avrbv, Kal epya^Sfievog diKaioavvrjv, 

StKTOQ CLVTtj) £0T(. — St. PETER. 

The Science of Comparative Religion is still in its 
infancy; and if there is one danger more than another 
against which it should be on its guard, it is that of 
hasty and ill-considered generalization. Hasty general- 
ization is the besetting temptation of all young Sciences ; 
may I not say of Science in general ? They are in too 
great a hurry to justify their existence by arriving at re- 
sults which may be generally intelligible, instead of wait- 
ing patiently till the result shapes itself from the prem- 
ises ; as if, in the pursuit of truth, the chase was not 
always worth more than the game, and the process itself 
more than the result. Theory has, it is true, its advant- 

B 



26 MOHAMMED AND MOHAMMEDANISM. 

ages, even in a young Science, in the way of suggesting 
a definite line which inquiry may take. A brilliant hy- 
pothesis formed, not by random guess-work, but by the 
trained imagination of the man of Science, or by the 
true divination of genius, enlarges the horizon of the 
student whom the limits of the human faculties them- 
selves drive to be a specialist, but who is apt to become 
too much so. It throws a flood of light upon a field of 
knowledge w T hich was before, perhaps, half in shadow, 
bringing out each object in its relative place and in its 
true proportions ; finally, it gathers scattered facts into 
one focus, and, explaining them provisionally by a single 
law, it makes an appeal to the fancy, which must react 
on the other mental powers, and be a most powerful 
stimulus to further research. In truth, much that is now 
demonstrated fact was once hypothesis, and would never 
have been demonstrated unless it had been first assumed. 
But since there are few Keplers in the world — men 
ready to sacrifice, without hesitation, an hypothesis that 
had seemed to explain the universe, and become, as it 
were, a part of themselves, the moment that the facts 
seem to require it — great circumspection will always be 
needed lest the facts may be made to bend to the theory, 
instead of its being modified to meet them. 

Bearing this caution in mind, we may, perhaps, think 
that the Science of Comparative Eeligion, young as it 



ORIGIN OF RELIGION, MORAL. 27 

is, has yet been in existence long enough to enable us to 
lay it down, at all events provisionally, as a general law, 
that all the great religions of the world, the commence- 
ment of which has not been immemorial — coeval, that is, 
with the human mind itself — have been in the first in- 
stance moral rather than theological; they have been 
called into existence to meet social and national needs; 
they have raised man gradually toward God, rather than 
brought down God at once to man. 

Judaism, for instance, sprang into existence at the 
moment when the Israelites passed, and because they 
passed, from the Patriarchal to the Political life ; when 
from slavery they emerged into freedom; when they 
ceased to be a family, and became a nation. " I am the 
Lord thy God, which brought thee out of the land of 
Egypt, and out of the house of bondage." The Moral 
Law which followed — the Theocracy itself — was the out- 
come of this fundamental fact. The nation that God 
has chosen — nay, that he has called into existence — is to 
keep his laws and to be his people. Consequently, all law 
to the ancient Hebrew was alike 'divine, whether writ- 
ten, as he believed, by the finger of God on two tables, 
or whether applied by the civil magistrate to the spe- 
cial cases brought before him. Moral and political of- 
fenses are thus offenses against God, and the ideas of 
crime and sin are identical alike in fact and in thought. 



28 MOHAMMED AND MOHAMMEDANISM. 

Again, take a glance at the religion of Buddha. We 
speak of Buddhism, and are apt to think of it chiefly as 
a body of doctrine, drawn up over two thousand years 
ago, and at this day professed by four hundred and fifty 
millions of human beings ; and we wonder, as well w T e 
may, how a summwn bonum of mere painlessness in 
this world, and practically, and to the ordinary mind, of 
total extinction when this world is over, can have satis- 
fied the spiritual cravings of Buddha's contemporaries, 
and in its various forms can now be the life-guidance 
of a third of the human race. But we forget that, in its 
origin at least, Buddhism was more of a social than of a 
religious reformation. It was an attack upon that web 
of priestcraft which Brahmanism had woven around the 
whole frame-work of Indian society.** It was the level- 
ing of caste distinctions, the sight of a " man born to be 
a king " throwing off his royal dignity, sweeping away 
the sacerdotal mummeries which he had himself tested 
and found unfruitful, preferring poverty to riches, and 
Sudras to Brahmans. It was Buddha's overpowering 
sense of the miseries* of sin, his dim yearnings after a 
better life, his moral system — of which the sum is Love 



* See Max MUller's " Chips from a German Workshop," vol. i., p. 210 
-226, especially p. 220 ; and Spence Hardy's * ' Legends and Theories 
of the Buddhists," Introduction, p. 13-20. Cf. also Beal's " Buddhist 
Pilgrims," Introduction, p. id, seq. 



CHRISTIANITY. 29 

— which wrought upon the hearts of his hearers. " He 
founded, it is true, a new religion, but he began by at- 
tacking an old." He reconstructed society first, and 
it was his social reform that led to his religion, rather 
than his religion which involved his social reconstruc- 
tion. The half we may, perhaps, think would have been 
more than the whole — 

"Qusesivit coelo lucem ingemuitque reperta." 

Nor is it much otherwise with Christianity itself. 
Christ was before all things the Founder of a new So- 
ciety ; not, it is true, of a political Society : had it been 
so, more of his countrymen would have seen in his 
person the Messiah that was to come, and in his king- 
dom the golden age of their own poets and prophets. 
The political frame- work, indeed, of the world Christ 
came neither to destroy nor to reconstruct, except indi- 
rectly and remotely. He recognized the logic of facts ; 
above all, the tremendous logic of the Roman Empire. 
Tribute was to be paid to Caesar, even though that Csesar 
was a Tiberius. The new Society was potentially a 
world-wide one, a vast democracy in which Jew and 
Roman, slave and freeman, rich and poor were on a 
footing of absolute equality. Enthusiastic love to Christ 
himself, evidenced by purity of heart, by forgetf ulness 
of self, and by enthusiastic love to all mankind, was the 
one condition and the one test of membership. 



30 MOHAMMED AND MOHAMMEDANISM. 

It is true that to this new Creation of his Christ 
gives a name, which we are accustomed to look upon as 
conveying mainly theological ideas ; he calls it " the 
Kingdom of Heaven/ 5 but how does he explain the term 
himself ? His great precursor, John the Baptist, had 
predicted its immediate advent. Christ says, It is here 
already — it is within you. At the very opening of his 
work, he speaks of it as already existing ; the outline 
was there, even if the details were not filled in. Now 
if the Kingdom of Heaven existed before it had dawned, 
even upon the most favored of his followers, that he. 
was more than " that Prophet," it would seem to follow 
that the essence of his kingdom was, not the doctrine 
which they did not and could not as yet accept, but the 
higher life they saw Christ leading — the life of the soul ; 
and which, seeing, they reverenced, and reverencing, as 
far as might be, washed to imitate. The Sermon on the 
Mount, so far as that which is indescribable can be de- 
scribed at all, and that which is the fountain-head of 
goodness in infinitely varied types can be judged by one 
or two of the rills which issue from it, is little else than 
Christ's own life translated into words ; and those who, 
least imperfectly, retranslated his words back into their 
own lives, were the very " salt of the earth." They were 
members of the Kingdom of Heaven, even though they 
did not believe, as some did not even to the end, that 



CHRISTIANITY. 31 

he who " spake as never man spake " was something 
more than man. 

If we go back to the ipsissima verba, so far as we can 
now get at them, of Christ himself, how much of the 
doctrine that we are apt to attribute to Christ we shall 
find to be Pauline — how much more Patristic, Scholastic, 
Puritan ! How little dogma, and how much morality, 
there is in the Founder of our religion ; how few words, 
and how many works ; how little about consequences, 
how much about motives ; in a word, how little theol- 
ogy, and how much religion ! I do not of course mean 
to deny that Moses, Buddha, Christ himself were found- 
ers of a theology as well as of a life ; I only say that the 
life came first, since it was that which was most called 
for by the time, and it was their new views of life which 
prepared their followers to receive and develop their 
new views of God. " If any man will do his will, he 
shall know of the doctrine whether it be of God." " He 
that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can 
he love God whom he hath not seen?" "Blessed are 
the pure in heart, for they shall see God." 

I am aware that distinguished German philosophers, 
Max Miiller among them,* have laid it down that men 
can not form themselves into a people till they have 

* "Introduction to the Science of Religion," Lecture III., p. 144-153. 



32 MOHAMMED AND MOHAMMEDANISM. 

come to an agreement about their religion, and that com- 
munity of faith is a bond of union more fundamental 
than any other bond at all. But I do not think that if 
the distinction which I have drawn between the prime- 
val and the historical religions of the world be kept in 
sight, there is much necessary antagonism between their 
view and mine ; that a new religion is, in order of time, 
the outcome and not the cause of a general movement 
toward a higher life, whether moral or national. Re- 
ligion is, no doubt, practically all that they say it is — a 
tie so strong that it can give an ideal unity, as it did in 
Greece, to tribes differing from one another in degrees 
of civilization, in interests, and in dialect; but it does 
not follow that it was historically ever the original mov- 
ing power in the aggregation of scattered tribes, or that 
a new religion w r as at first a revelation of God rather 
than a revelation of morality. There must have been a 
previous community of race and language for the re- 
ligion to work upon ; there must also have been a strong, 
though very possibly an ill-directed and a desultory up- 
heaval of society. The fragments still existing of the 
primeval creed are no doubt a factor in that upheaval, 
and feel its force ; but the new religion is the result and 
not the cause of the general movement. It is not till 
later that it pays the debt it owes to what gave it birth, 
by lending a higher sanction to each institution of the 



RELIGION IN GREECE. 33 

new society, and so does in truth become, what philoso- 
phers say it is, the most important bond in a national 
life. First the aspirations, then that which satisfies 
them ! First a new conception of the relation of men 
to one another, then that conception sanctioned, vivified, 
lit up by the newly perceived relation of all alike to 
God! 

I would also remark that Greece itself, though Max 
Miiller appeals to it in favor of his own conclusions, 
seems to supply an argument in favor of my view. For 
even in the Persian wars the common danger and the 
common hatred of the " Barbarian 5 ' failed to bring about 
more than a very transitory coalition between two or 
three of the leading states. The ideal unity of the 
Greek races was only an ideal, and Panhellenism never 
went so far as to unite the different states into a homo- 
geneous people. If there had been a real and spontane- 
ous movement among the autonomous cities of Greece 
toward centralization, a great reformer might have taken 
advantage of it, and working upon the " dim recollection 
of the common allegiance they owed from time imme- 
morial to the great Father of Gods and men, the old 
Zeus of Dodona, the Panhellenic Zeus,"* have welded 
the fragments into a nation. The One would not mere- 

* " Science of Religion," p. 148. 

B 2 



34 MOHAMMED AND MOHAMMEDANISM. 

ly have been dimly discerned behind the Many by the 
highest minds, but the perception would have been con- 
verted into a practical reality. The intellectual mission 
of Socrates might have taken something of the shape 
and realized something of the results of the mission of 
Mohammed. But there was no such national movement 
in Greece, and therefore no opportunity either for the 
birth of a new religion or a revival of the old one. In 
Greek Polytheism we see historically nothing but decay, 
Mythology having completely overgrown the Religion. 
The gross stories of Homer and of Hesiod, which so 
scandalized Socrates and Plato, had, even at that early 
time, concealed from all but the highest minds the vague 
primitive belief, common probably to the whole Indo- 
Germanic race, in one Father who is in Heaven. 

To what extent the principle I have laid down as to 
the origin of the three great historical religions is also 
true of that of Mohammed will develop itself gradually 
in the sequel. 

It has been remarked, indeed, by writer after writer, 
that Islam is less interesting than other religions, inas- 
much as it is less original. And this is one of the fa- 
vorite charges brought against it by Christian apologists. 
In the first place, I am inclined to think that the charge 
of want of originality, though it can not be denied, has 
been overdone by recent writers ; most conspicuously so 



IS ISLAM ORIGINAL? 35 

by M. Renan, who, ingenious and beautiful as his Essay 
is, seems disposed to explain the whole fabric of Islam- 
ism by the ideas that existed before Mohammed, and 
the political direction given to it by his successors, most 
notably by Omar ; in fact, it seems to me that the only 
element left out, or not accounted for, in his analysis of 
Mohammedanism, is Mohammed himself. His Moham- 
medanism resembles a Hamlet with not only the Prince 
of Denmark, but with Shakespeare himself cut out. The 
disjointed members and some few elements of the fab- 
ric remain — about as much as we should have of the 
Hamlet of Shakespeare in the Amlettus of Saxo-Gram- 
maticus ; but the informing, animating, inspiring soul 
is 'wanting. 

It is undeniable that a vague and hearsay acquaint- 
ance with the Old Testament, the Talmud, and the New 
Testament, and the undefined religious cravings of a few 
of his immediate predecessors or contemporaries, influ- 
enced Mohammed much, and traces of them at second 
hand may be found in every other page of the Koran ; 
but then, in the second place, it may be asked whether 
want of originality is any reproach to a religion: for 
what is religion ? 

It is that something which, whether it is a collection 
of shadows projected by the mind itself upon the mirror 
of the external world, explaining the Macrocosm by the 



36 MOHAMMED AND MOHAMMEDANISM. 

Microcosm, and invested with a reality which belongs 
only to the mind that casts them, if indeed even to that, 
or whether it is indeed an insight of the soul into reali- 
ties which exist independently of it, and which underlie 
alike the world of sense and the world of reason ; it is 
something, at all events, which satisfies the spiritual wants 
of man. Man's spiritual wants, whatever their origin, 
are his truest wants ; and the something which satisfies 
those wants is the most real of all realities to him. 

The founder, therefore, of a religion which is to last 
must read the spiritual needs of a nation correctly, or at 
all events must be capable of seeing the direction in 
which they lead, and the development they will one day 
take. If he read them correctly, he need not care about" 
any originality beyond that which such insight implies ; 
he will rather do well to avoid it. The religious world 
was startled a few years ago by the revelations of an 
Oriental scholar that much supposed to be exclusively 
the doctrine of the New Testament is to be found in 
the Talmud, as though some reflection was thereby cast 
upon the Founder of our religion ! Positivists, again, 
have laid great stress on the fact that some of the moral 
precepts supposed to be exclusively Christian are to be 
found in the sacred writings of Confucius and the Bud- 
dhists. But what then ? Is a religion less true because 
it recognizes itself in other garbs, because it incorporates 



WHAT IS RELIGION? 37 

in itself all that is best in the system which it expands 
or supplants ? What if we found the whole Sermon on 
the Mount dispersed about the writings of the Jewish 
Rabbis, as we unquestionably find some part of it ? 
Christ himself was always the first to assert that he 
came, not to destroy, but to fulfill. But it is strange 
that the avowed relation of Christianity to Judaism has 
not protected Islam from the assaults of Christian apolo- 
gists, grounded on its avowed relation to the two together ! 

But what of interest, I am free to admit, the religion 
of Mohammed loses on the score of originality, it gains 
in the greater fullness of our knowledge of its origin. 
It is the latest and most historical of the great religions 
of the world. 

Eenan has remarked that the origin of nearly all the 
leading phenomena of life and history is obscure. What, 
for instance, can Max Muller tell us of the origin of 
language ? What well-authenticated facts can political 
philosophers like Hobbes or Locke, or even scientific 
antiquaries like Sir Charles Lyell or Sir John Lubbock, 
tell us of the origin of society ? What can Darwin tell 
us of the origin of life ? Trace the genealogy of all ex- 
isting languages into the three great groups of Aryan, 
Semitic, and Turanian ; find, if you can, the parent lan- 
guage from which even these three families have orig- 
inally diverged; are we any nearer an explanation of 



38 MOHAMMED AND MOHAMMEDANISM. 

what language really is ? Our hopes, indeed, are aroused 
by hints dropped throughout Max Miiller's fascinating 
book that he has a secret to divulge to those who have 
gone through an adequate process of initiation. But 
to our disappointment we find that the explanation of 
" Phonetic Types " is only a roundabout way of saying — 
what, no doubt, is true — that language is instinctive, 
and that we know nothing whatever of its origin. That 
sound expresses thought we knew before ; but how does 
it express it % That is the question. Trace elaborately 
through Geological Periods, if you can, the steps by 
which the Monad has been developed into Man, and 
show that there is no link wanting, and that Nature, so 
far as we can trace, never makes a leap. Perhaps not ; 
but there is a leap somewhere, and who can say how 
vast the leap before the Protoplasm can have received 
the something that is not Protoplasm but Life, and which 
has all the dignity of life, even though it be a Monad's ? 
So, too, if the Science of Religion last long enough, 
we may one day be able to trace a continuity of growth 
from the very dawn of man's belief till, as in history so 
in religion, 

"We doubt not through the ages one increasing purpose runs, 
And the thoughts of men are widened with the process of the suns." 

We shall find, however, that, even in the dimmest dawn 
of history, the essence of religion was already there, not 



ELEMENTS OF RELIGION. 39 

forming, but already formed ; a feeling of mystery which, 
as it is the beginning of philosophy, so, perhaps, it is the 
very first beginning of religion ; the distinction between 
right and wrong ; the idea of a Power which is neither 
Man's nor external Nature's, though it is evidenced by 
them both; the sense that there is something in this 
world amiss ; and the fear, or, possibly, the hope, that it 
may be unriddled by and by.* Where did those ideas 
come from ? And do we know any thing more of the 
origin of religion itself by having traced it to some of 
its elements ? 

And what is true of religion generally is also true, 
unfortunately, of those three religions which I have 
called, for want of a better name, historical — and of 
their founders. We know all too little of the first and 
earliest laborers ; *too much, perhaps, of those who have 
entered into their labors. We know less of Zoroaster 
and Confucius than we do of Solon and Socrates ; less 

* I do not mean to touch here upon the disputed question whether there 
are races without any definite religious ideas at all. Sir John Lubbock 
(" Origin of Civilization," cap. iv.) has brought together the testimony of 
many missionaries and travelers as to a great variety of tribes which seem 
to be, at all events, without any thing beyond the elements I have named ; 
but I much doubt whether these elements, or some of them, do not exist 
in all tribes, even in the lowest. It is certain that a longer acquaint- 
ance and minuter observation among savage tribes, especially the African, 
have often led to the reversal of an opinion naturally but hastily formed 
in the first instance. See Waitz, " Anthropologic der Naturvolker," 
vol. ii., p. 4. 



40 MOHAMMED AND MOHAMMEDANISM. 

of Moses and of Buddha than we do of Ambrose and 
Augustine. We know indeed some fragments of a f rag- 

^ merit of Christ's life; but who can lift the veil of the 

i 

\ thirty years that prepared the way for the three ? What 
we do know indeed has renovated a third of the world, 
and may yet renovate much more ; an ideal of life at 
once remote and near; possible and impossible ;. but 
how much we do not know ! What do we know of his 
mother, of his home life, of his early friends, and his 
relation to them, of the gradual dawning, or, it may 
be, the sudden revelation, of his divine mission? How 
many questions about him occur to each of us that must 
always remain questions ! 

But in Mohammedanism every thing is different; here, 
instead of the shadowy and the mysterious, we have his- 
tory."* We know as much of Mohammed as we do even 
of Luther and Milton. The mythical, the legendary, 
the supernatural is almost wanting in the original Arab 
authorities, or at all events can easily be distinguished 
from what is historical. f Nobody here is the dupe of 

* Cf. Kenan, "Etudes d'Histoire Keligieuse," p. 220 and 230. 

t The belief in Jinn, beings created of smokeless fire 2000 years before 
Adam, as a part of the original Arab mythology, was not discarded by 
Mohammed (Koran, Sura i., 7-8; xlvi., 28, 29; lvii., 17-18; lxxii., 1, 
etc.) ; but, in other respects, the miraculous and mythological element in 
Mohammedanism comes almost exclusively from Persian sources. Persia 
has revenged the destruction of her national faith by corrupting in many 
particulars the simplicity of the creed of her conquerors. For an exhaust- 



FULL KNOWLEDGE OF ISLAM. 41 

himself or of others ; there is the full light of day upon 
all that that light can ever reach at all. " The abysmal 
depths of personality " indeed are, and must always re- 
main, beyond the reach of any line and plummet of 
ours. But we know every thing of the external history 
of Mohammed — his youth, his appearance, his relations, 
his habits ; the first idea and the gradual growth, inter- 
mittent though it was, of his great revelation ; while for 
his internal history, after his mission had been pro- 
claimed, we have a book absolutely unique in its origin, 
in its preservation, and in the chaos of its contents, but 
on the authenticity of which no one has ever been able 
to cast a serious doubt. There, if in any book, w r e have 
a mirror of one of the master-spirits of the world ; often 
inartistic, incoherent, self -contradictory, dull, but im- 
pregnated with a few grand ideas which stand out from 
the whole; a mind seething with the inspiration pent 
within it, "intoxicated with God," but full of human 
weaknesses, from which he never pretended — and it is 
his lasting glory that he never pretended — to be free.* 

ive account of Arab ideas on the Jinn, their creation, their influence on 
human affairs, and their abode, see Note 21 to the Introduction of Lane's 
edition of " The Thousand and One Nights." The legends illustrating the 
power of Solomon over the Genii are well known. The notes to Lane's 
edition of the "Arabian Nights " form a storehouse of accurate informa- 
tion upon Arab manners and customs. 

* It was a proverbial saying in very early times among Mussulmans 
that " Mohammed's character was the Koran." 



42 MOHAMMED AND MOHAMMEDANISM. 

Upon the striking resemblances between the Koran 
and the Bible — the book with which it is most natural- 
ly compared — and the still more striking differences, I 
need not now dwell at length, especially as the latter 
have been admirably drawn out by Dean Stanley.* 

To compress, as best I may, into a few sentences what 
he has said so w T ell, making only a few amendments 
where, from my point of view, they seem to be called 
for : The Koran lays claim to a verbal, literal, and me- 
chanical inspiration in every part alike, and is regarded 
as such by almost all Mohammedans. The Bible makes 
no such claim, except in one or two controverted pas- 
sages ; and there are few Christians who do not now ad- 
mit at least a human element in every part of it. The 
text of the Koran is stereotyped ; in the Bible there is an 
immense variety of readings. The Koran has hitherto 
proved to be incapable of harmonious translation into 
other languages ; the Bible loses little or nothing in the 
process. The Bible is the work of a large number of 
poets, prophets, statesmen, and lawgivers, extending over 
a vast period of time, and incorporates with itself other 
and earlier, and often conflicting documents ; the Koran 
comes straight from the brain, sometimes from the rav- 
ings, of an unlettered enthusiast, who yet in this proved 

* " Lectures on the Eastern Church," Lecture VIII., p. 266-273. 



KORAN AND BIBLE COMPARED. 43 

himself to be poet and prophet, statesman and lawgiver 
in one. Finally, the strength of the Koran lies in its 
uniformity, in its intolerance, in its narrowness ; the 
strength of the Bible in its variety, its toleration, its 
universality. In all these points, as in the more impor- 
tant one of the morality of its highest revelations, the 
supremacy of our sacred books over the one sacred book 
of the Mohammedans is indisputable. 

Dean Stanley asks somewhat triumphantly, but on the 
whole rightly enough, whether there is a single passage 
in the Koran that can be named, as a proof of inspira- 
tion, with St. Paul's description of Charity. But it is 
worth remarking that a traditional sermon of Moham- 
med's has been preserved, quoted by Washington Ir- 
ving,* which, though it is in no way equal to this, the 
sublimest passage of the greatest of the Apostles, yet 
shows a real insight into the nature and comprehensive- 
ness of this Christian grace ; and may at all events serve 
as a comment on 1 Corinthians xiii. It is in the form 
of an Apologue : " When God made the earth, it shook 
to and fro till he put mountains on it to keep it firm." 
Then the angels asked, " O Gfod, is there any thing in 
thy creation stronger than these mountains ?" And God 
replied, " Iron is stronger than the mountains, for it 

* " Life of Mahomet," p. 87. He is quoting from Abu Hurairah. 



44 MOHAMMED AND MOHAMMEDANISM. 

breaks them." — " And is there any thing in thy creation 
stronger than iron ?" " Yes, fire is stronger than iron, 
for it melts it." — " Is there any thing stronger than fire?" 
" Yes, water, for it quenches fire." — " Is there any thing 
stronger than water ?" " Yes, wind, for it puts water in 
motion." — " O our Sustainer ! is there any thing in thy 
creation stronger than wind ?" " Yes, a good man giv- 
ing alms ; if he give it with his right hand and conceal 
it from his left, he overcomes all things." But Moham- 
med did not end here, or restrict his notion of charity 
to the somewhat narrow sense which, in common lan- 
guage, it bears now, that of liberal and unostentatious 
almsgiving : he went on to give almost as wide a defi- 
nition of charity as St. Paul himself. " Every good act 
is charity ; your smiling in your brother's face ; your 
putting a wanderer in the right road ; your giving water 
to the thirsty, is charity ; exhortations to another to do 
right are charity. A man's true wealth hereafter is the 
good he has done in this world to his fellow-man. When 
he dies, people will ask, What property has he left be- 
hind him ? But the angels will ask, What good deeds 
has he sent before him ?"" 

But from one point of view the Koran has to the 
comparative mythologist, and therefore to the student 
of human nature, an interest quite unique, and not the 
less absorbing that it springs out of the very defects that 



MOHAMMED AND THE KORAN. 45 

I have pointed out By studying the Koran, together 
with the history of Mohammedanism, we see with our 
own eyes, what we can only infer or imagine in other 
cases, the precise steps by which a religion naturally and 
necessarily develops into a mythology. 

In the Koran we have, beyond all doubt, the exact 
words of Mohammed without subtraction and without 
addition. We see with our own eyes the birth and ado- 
lescence of a religion. In the history of Mohammedan- 
ism we descry the parasitical growth that fastens on it, 
even in its founder's lifetime. We see the way in which 
a man who denied that he could work miracles is be- 
lieved to work them even by his contemporaries, and 
how in the next generation the extravagant vision of 
the nocturnal flight to the seventh heaven, with all its 
gorgeous imagery, and the revolutions of the moon 
around the Kaaba, is taken for sober fact, and is prop- 
agated with all the elaboration of details which, if thev 
came from any body, could have come only from Mo- 
hammed himself ; and yet all of it with the most perfect 
good faith. We see how a man, who, though he had once 
in an outburst of anger uttered a prophecy which turned 
out true, always denied that he could predict the future, 
and was yet, in spite of himself, credited with all the su- 
pernatural insight of a seer. Lastly, we mark how the 
formalities and the sacrifices and the idolatries which 



46 MOHAMMED AND MOHAMMEDANISM. 

lie spent his life in overthrowing, revived in another 
shape out of the frequency of prayers and fasts that he 
enjoined, and of the pilgrimages he permitted. The 
holy places themselves became more holy, as having 
been the scene of his preaching and of his death, and 
so in time received more than human honors. We 
know from history what the outgrowth and superstruct- 
ure have been, and we read in the Koran how narrow 
the foundation was. 

But from the Bible, by its very nature, and owing to 
those peculiarities which constitute its special strength, 
we fail to know, in the same sense, the exact limits of 
the foundation of the Christendom that has overspread 
the world. In the outward shape in which it has come 
down to us, and in the questions connected with the au- 
thorship of its different parts and the variety of its con- 
tents, the Bible resembles not so much the Koran as the 
Sonna, which is, of course, rejected by the Sheeah half 
of the Mohammedan races. Even in the Gospels as we 
have them, comment and inference, and the individuali- 
ty of the writer, are mixed with verbal accuracy and ex- 
act observation. We can 'detect conflicting currents of 
feeling and of thought which it taxes the ingenuity and 
honesty even of harmonists to harmonize. The New 
Testament is not less, but more valuable because of 
these discrepancies. Its undesigned discrepancies have 



GROWTH OF MYTHOLOGY. 47 

been as valuable in widening the base of our Christian- 
ity as its undesigned coincidences are in assuring it. 
Whether we may legitimately apply the inferences to 
be drawn from our full knowledge of the growth of 
Mohammedanism to our imperfect knowledge of the 
growth of other religions is, of course, open to argu- 
ment, but the interest and importance of the inquiry 
can hardly be overestimated. 

But over and above the interest attaching to the one 
religion of the w r orld which is strictly historical in its 
origin, and which therefore may, rightly or wrongly, be 
used to explain the origin of those of which we know 
less, there is the fascination that must always attach to 
those mixed characters of whom we know so much, and 
yet so little ; who have made the world what it is, and 
yet whom the world can not read. 

" Hero, impostor, fanatic, priest, or sage :" 

which element predominates in the man as a whole we 
may perhaps discover, and most certainly we can say 
now it was not the impostor ; but taking him at differ- 
ent times and under different circumstances, the more 
one reads the more one distrusts one's own conclusions, 
and, as Dean Milman remarks, answers with the Arab, 
" Allah only knows."* 

* " Latin Christianity," vol. i., p. 555. 



48 MOHAMMED AND MOHAMMEDANISM. 

Nor does Mohammedanism lack other claims on our 
attention. Its ultimate enthusiastic acceptance by the 
Arabs, the new direction given to it by the later revela- 
tions to Mohammed, its rapid conquests, the literature 
and civilization it brought in its train, the way in which 
it crumpled up the Roman Empire On one side and the 
Persian on* the other; how it drove Christianity before 
it on the west and north, and Fire -Worship on the east 
and south; how it crushed the false prophets that al- 
ways follow in the wake of a true one, as the "jackals 
do the trail of a lion ; how it spread over two conti- 
nents, and how it settled in a third, and at one time all 
but overwhelmed the whole, till Charles the Hammer, 
on the field of Tours, turned it back upon itself ; how 
the indivisible empire, the representative on earth of the 
Theocracy in heaven, became many empires, with rival 
Kaliphs at Damascus and Bagdad, at Cairo, Cairoan, 
and Cordova; how horde after horde of barbarians of 
the great Turkish or Tartar stock were precipitated on 
the dominions of the faithful, only to be conquered by 
the faith of those whose arms they overthrew; how, 
when the news came that the very birthplace of the 
Christian faith had fallen into their hands, " a nerve 
was touched," as Gibbon says, " of exquisite feeling, 
and the sensation vibrated to the heart of Europe ;" how 
Christendom itself thus became for t\yo hundred years 



HISTORY OF ISLAM. 49 

half Mohammedanized, and tried to meet fanaticism 
by counter-fanaticism — the sword, the Bible, and the 
Cross against the scimiter, the Koran, and the Cres- 
cent ; how, lastly, when the tide of aggression had been 
checked, it once more burst its barriers, and, seating it- 
self on the throne of the Caesars of the East, threatened 
more than once the very centre of Christendom — all 
this is matter of history, at which I can only glance. 

And what is its position now ? 

It numbers at this day more than one hundred mill- 
ions, probably one hundred and fifty millions, of be- 
lievers as sincere, as devout, as true to their creed as are 
the believers in any creed whatever. It still has its grip 
on three continents, extending from Morocco to the Ma- 
lay peninsula, from Zanzibar to the Kirghis horde. It 
embraces within its ample circumference two extensive 
empires, one Sonnee,the other Sheeah; the first of which, 
though it has often been pronounced sick unto death or 
even dead, is not dead yet, and is even showing signs of 
reviving vitality. It still grasps the cradles of the Jew- 
ish and of the Christian faith, and the spots most dear 
to both — Mount Sinai and the Cave of Machpelah, the 
Church of the Nativity and the Church of the Holy Sep- 
ulchre. Africa, which had yielded so early to Christian- 
ity — nay, which had given birth to Latin Christianity 
itself; the Africa of Cyprian and Tertullian, of Antony 

C 



50 MOHAMMED AND MOHAMMEDANISM. 

and of Augustine — yielded still more readily to Mo- 
hammed ; and from the Strait of Gibraltar to the Isth- 
mus of Suez may still be heard the cry which with 
them is no vain repetition of " Allahu-Akbar" — God 
is great ; there is no god but God, and Mohammed is 
his prophet. 

And if it be said, as it often is, that Mohammedanism 
has gained nothing since the first flame of religious en- 
thusiasm, fanned, as it then often was, by the last of 
conquest, has died out, I answer that this is far from 
the truth. 

In the extreme East, Mohammedanism has since then 
won and maintained for centuries a moral supremacy in 
the important Chinese province of Yun-Nan, and has 
thus actually succeeded in thrusting a wedge between 
the two great Buddhist empires of Burmah and of 
China. Within our own memory, indeed, after a fifteen 
years' war, and under the leadership of Ta Wen Siu — 
one of those half -military, half -religious geniuses which 
Islam seems always capable of producing — it succeed- 
ed in wresting from the Celestial Empire a territorial 
supremacy in the western half of this province. Two 
years ago an embassy of intelligent and, it is worth 
adding, of progressive and tolerant Mussulmans from 
Yifn-Nan, headed by Prince Hassan, son of the chief- 
tain who has now become the Sultan Soliman, appeared 



ISLAM IN CHINA. 51 

in England, and the future of the Panthays,* as they 
are called, began at length to attract attention, not so 
much, I fear, from the extraordinary interest attaching 
to their religious history — that interests few Englishmen 
— as to the possible opening to our Eastern trade, the 
only Gospel which most Englishmen care now to preach, 
and one which we did consistently for many years prop- 
agate by our commercial wars in China and Japan, at 
the expense of every principle of religion and humanity. 
Unfortunately the interests of our trade were not suffi- 
ciently bound up with the existence of the Panthays to 
call for any representations on our part, and Prince 
Hassan was compelled to return to Asia without any 
prospect of moral support from us or from the Sultan 
of Turkey. On arriving at Rangoon he was met by the 
news that the Mussulmans had at length been overpow- 
ered by the fearful odds arrayed against them; that 
Tali-Fu, the capital, had fallen, and men, women, and 
children to the number of some thirty thousand had 
been massacred by the victors. The fate of Momien,the 
other stronghold, w r as of course only a question of time ; 
but though the short-lived Mohammedan sovereignty 
has been destroyed, and what was won by the sword 

* A name given to them by their Burmese neighbors, from whom the 
word has passed into the Western World. It is said to be a corruption 
of the Burmese "Putthee," i. e., Mohammedan. 



52 MOHAMMED AND MOHAMMEDANISM. 

has since perished by the sword, Mohammedanism it- 
self has not been extinguished in the Celestial Empire. 
Within the last eight years that vast tract of country 
called Western Chinese Tartary, or Eastern Turkestan, 
has thrown off the yoke of China, and has added another 
to the list of Mussulman kingdoms. Khotau and Yark- 
and and Kashgar are united under the vigorous rule of 
the Atalik Ghazee,* Yakoob Beg. Whatever may be 
his private character, the abolition of the slave-trade 
throughout his dominions, his rigid administration of jus- 
tice, his readiness to establish commercial relations with 
India, and the respect shown for Christianity even by 
the Meccan pilgrims among his subjects, are some indi- 
cation of what Mohammedanism may yet have in store 
for it in Central Asia under the influence of a master 
mind, and with the modifications that are possible or neces- 
sary to it. Throughout the Chinese Empire, at Karachar, 
for instance, there are scattered Mussulman communities 
who have higher hopes than Buddhism or Confucianism, 
and a purer morality than Taoism can supply. The Pan- 



* The title was given him by the Ameer of Bokhara. It means ' ' Guard- 
ian of the Champions of Religion." For the abolition of the slave-trade, 
see the best authority on the subject— Shaw's "High Tartary," p. 347; 
and for the view of Christians taken by some pilgrims to Mecca from Cen- 
tral Asia, p. 65. The letters received from Mr. Forsyth's Mission (see 
London Times, of March 17, 1874) seem quite to bear out the view I had 
formed of Yakoob Beg's position. 



ISLAM IN EAST INDIAN ISLANDS. 53 

thays themselves, it is believed, still number a million 
and a half ; and the unity of God and the mission of 
God's prophet are attested day by day by a continuous 
line of worshipers from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean. 
Nay, even beyond, in the East Indian Archipelago, 
beyond the Strait of Malacca, if I may venture just now 
so to call it, in Java and Sumatra, in Borneo and 
Celebes, Islam has raised many of the natives above 
their former selves, and has long been the dominant 
faith. It established itself in the Malay Peninsula and 
Sumatra in the fourteenth, and in Java and Celebes in 
the fifteenth century ; and it is interesting to note, as is 
remarked by Crawfurd, that about the time it was be- 
ing gradually expelled from Western Europe, it made 
up for its expulsion by extending itself to the East of 
Asia. The Arab missionaries were just in time, for they 
anticipated by only a few years the first advent of grasp- 
ing Portuguese and ambitious Spaniards. It can not, 
of course, be supposed that among races so low in the 
scale of humanity as are most of the Indian islanders, 
Mohammedanism would be able to do what it did orig- 
inally for the Arabs or for the Turkish hordes; but it has 
done something even for them. It expelled Hindooism 
from some islands, and a very corrupt Buddhism from 
others. It was propagated by missionaries who cared \ 
very much for the souls they could win, and nothing for 



54 MOHAMMED AND MOHAMMEDANISM. . 

the plunder they could carry off. They conciliated the 
natives, learned their languages, and intermarried with 
them ; and in the larger islands their success was rapid, 
and, so far as nature would allow, complete.* The Phil- 
ippines and the Moluccas, which were conquered by 
Spain and Portugal respectively, did not become Mo- 
hammedan, for they had to surrender at once their lib- 
erty and their religion. It is no wonder that the religion 
known to the natives chiefly through the unblushing ra- 
pacity of the Portuguese, and the terrible cruelties of 
the Dutch, has not extended itself beyond the reach of 
their swords. Here, as elsewhere in the East, the most 
fatal hinderance to the spread of Christianity has been 
the lives of Christians, f I will only add further that 
the Mussulmans of the East India Islands are very lax 
in their obedience to many of the precepts of their law, 
that they are tolerant of other religions, and that the 
women enjoy a liberty, a position, and an influence which 
contrasts favorably w T ith that allowed to them in any 
other Asiatic country 4 

* Crawfurd's "Indian Archipelago," vol. ii., p. 275 and 315. 

f For the cruelties of the Portuguese, see Crawfurd, vol. ii., p. 403, and 
for the Dutch, see especially vol. ii., p. 425, seq., and 441. For some 
startling facts as to the comparative morality of some native and Christian 
communities in India, see a paper by the Eev. J. N. Thoburn, in the Re- 
port of the Allahabad Missionary Conference, held in 1872-73, p. 467-470. 

X Crawfurd, vol. ii., p. 260 and 269-271; and Sir Stamford Raffles's 
" Java," vol. i., p. 261 ; and vol. ii., p. 2-5. 



ISLAM IN AFRICA. 55 

In Africa, again, Mohammedanism is spreading itself 
by giant strides almost year by year. Every one knows 
that within half a century from the Prophet's death the 
richest states of Africa, and those most accessible to 
Christianity and to European civilization, w r ere torn 
away from both by the armies of the faithful, with 
hardly a struggle or a regret ; but few except those 
who have studied the subject are aware that, ever since 
then, Mohammedanism has been gradually spreading 
over the northern half of the continent. 

Starting from the northwest corner, it first marched 
southward from Morocco, and by the time of the Nor- 
man Conquest had reached the neighborhood of Tim- 
buctoo, and had got firm hold of the Mandingoes ; thence 
it spread southward again to the Foulahs ; and then east- 
ward by the thirteenth century to Lake Tchad, where 
finally the Arab missionaries from the West joined hands 
with those from the East in the very heart of Africa.* 
Of course enormous tracts of heathenism were left, and 
are still left, in various parts of this vast area, and it is 
mainly among these that at this day Mohammedan mis- 
sionaries are meeting every where with a marked success 
which is denied to our own. We hear of whole tribes 
laying aside their devil-worship, or immemorial Fetich, 

* " Anthropologic der Naturvolker," by Dr. Theodor Waitz, p. 248- 
251. 



56 MOHAMMED AND MOHAMMEDANISM. 

and springing at a bound, as it were, from the very 
lowest to one of the highest forms of religious belief. 
Christian travelers, with every wish to think otherwise, 
have remarked that the negro who accepts Mohamme- 
danism acquires at once a sense of the dignity of hu- 
man nature not commonly found even among those 
I who have been brought to accept Christianity. 

It is also pertinent to observe here that such progress 
as any large part of the negro race has hitherto made is 
in exact proportion to the time that has elapsed, or to 
the degree of fervor with which they originally embraced 
or have since clung to Islam. The Mandingoes and the 
Fonlahs are salient instances of this ; their unquestion- 
able superiority to other negro tribes is as unquestion- 
ably owing to the early hold that Islam got upon them, 
and to the civilization and culture that it has always 
encouraged. 

Nor can it be said that it is only among those negroes 
who have never heard any thing of a purer faith that 
Mohammedanism is making such rapid progress. The 
Government Blue Books on our West African settle- 
ments, and the reports of missionary societies themselves, 
are quite at one on this head. The Governor of our 
West African colonies, Mr. Pope Hennessy, remarks that 
the liberated Africans are always handed over to Chris- 
tian missionaries for instruction, and that their children 



RAPID SPREAD IN AFRICA NOW. 57 

are baptized and brought up at the public expense in 
Christian schools, and are therefore, in a sense, ready- 
made converts. Yet the total number of professing 
Christians, 35,000 out of a population of 513,000 — very 
few even of these, as the Governor says, and as we can 
unfortunately well believe from our experience in coun- 
tries that are not African, being practical Christians — 
falls far short of the original number of liberated Af- 
ricans and their descendants.* On the other hand, the 
Rev. James Johnson, a native clergyman, and a man of 
remarkable energy and intelligence as well as of very 
Catholic spirit, deplores the fact that, of the total num- 
ber of Mohammedans to be found in Sierra Leone and 
its neighborhood, three fourths were not born Moham- 
medans, but have become so by conversion, w r hether 
from a nominal Christianity or from Paganism.f 

* Papers relating to Her Majesty's Colonial Possessions. Part II., 
1873, 2d division, p. 14. 

t Ibid., p. 15. As Mr. Pope Hennessy's Report has been much criti- 
cised, chiefly on the ground that he is a Roman Catholic (see a letter to 
the London Times, of Oct. 21, 1873, signed "Audi alteram partem "), and 
as I have based some statements upon it, it may be worth mentioning that 
I have had a conversation with Mr. Johnson, who is a strong Protestant 
himself, and that he bore testimony to the bona fides of the Report, and 
to its accuracy even on some points which have been most questioned. 
He told me that Mohammedanism was introduced into Sierra Leone, not 
many years ago, by three zealous missionaries who came from a great dis- 
tance. It seems now to be rapidly gaining the ascendency, in spite of all 
the European influences at work. It may perhaps be questioned, since 
he does not dwell much upon it, whether Mr. Pope Hennessy, in his re- 

C2 



58 MOHAMMED AND MOHAMMEDANISM. 

And, what is still more to our purpose to remark here, 
Mohammedanism, as it spreads now, is not attended by 
some of the drawbacks which accompanied its first in- 
troduction into the country. It is spread, not by the 
sword, but by earnest and simple-minded Arab mission- 
aries. It has also lost, except in certain well-defined 
districts, much of its intolerant and exclusive character. 
The two leading doctrines of Mohammedanism, and the 
general moral precepts of the Koran, are, of course, in- 
culcated every where. But, in other respects, the Mus- 
sulman missionaries exhibit a forbearance, a sympathy, 
and a respect for native customs and prejudices, and 
even for their more harmless beliefs, which is no doubt 
one reason of their success, and which our own mis- 
sionaries and schoolmasters would do well to imitate. 

We are assured, on all hands, that the Mussulman 
population has an almost passionate desire for educa- 
tion ; and those in the neighborhood of our colonies 
would throng our schools, first, if the practical educa- 
tion given were more worth having, and, secondly, if the 
teachers would refrain from needlessly attacking their 
cherished and often harmless customs. Wherever Mo- 
hammedans are numerous, they establish schools them- 

marks on the diminished number of Christians in Sierra Leone, made al- 
lowance for the return of a certain number of true Christians, such as 
Bishop Crowther, to their own countries. 



INTELLECTUAL BENEFITS IN AFRICA. 59 

selves ; and there are not a few who travel extraordi- 
nary distances to secure the best possible education. 
Mr. Pope Hennessy mentions the case of one young 
Mohammedan negro who is in the habit of purchasing 
costly books from Triibner in London, and who went 
to Futah, two hundred and fifty miles away, to obtain 
an education better than he could find in Sierra Leone 
itself.* Nor is it an uncommon thing for newly con- 
verted Mussulmans to make their way right across the 
Desert from Bornu, or from Lake Tchad, or down the 
Kile from Darfour or Wadai, a journey of over one 
thousand miles, that they may carry on their studies in 
El-Azhar, the great collegiate Mosque at Cairo, and 
may thence bring back the results of their training to 
their native country, and form so many centres of Mo- 
hammedan teaching and example.f 

Nor as to the effects of Islam when first embraced by 
a negro tribe can there be any reasonable doubt. Poly- 
theism disappears almost instantaneously ; sorcery, with 
its attendant evils, gradually dies away ; human sacri- 
fice becomes a thing of the past. The general moral 
elevation is most marked ; the natives begin for the first 

* Ibid., p. 10. 

t Waitz, p. 251. He calculates the number of students returning each 
year to be about fifty. To his book, and to the authorities to whom he 
refers, I owe many of the facts mentioned in the text illustrative of the 
influence of Islam on the native mind and character. 



60 MOHAMMED AND MOHAMMEDANISM. 

time in their history to dress, and that neatly. Squalid 
filth is replaced by a scrupulous cleanliness ; hospitality 
becomes a religious duty ; drunkenness, instead of the 
rule, becomes a comparatively rare exception. Though 
polygamy is allowed by the Koran, it is not common 
in practice, and, beyond the limits laid down by the 
Prophet, incontinence is rare ; chastity is looked upon 
as one of the highest, and becomes, in fact, one of the 
commoner virtues. It is idleness henceforward that 
degrades, and industry that elevates, instead of the re- 
verse. Offenses are henceforward measured by a writ- 
ten code instead of the arbitrary caprice of a chieftain 
— a step, as every one will admit, of vast importance in 
the progress of a tribe. The mosque gives an idea of 
architecture at all events higher than any the negro has 
yet had. A thirst for literature is created, and that for 
works of science and philosophy as w r ell as for commen- 
taries on the Koran. * There are whole tribes, such as 
the Jolofs on the River Gambia, and the Haussas, whose 
manly qualities we have had occasion to test in Ashan- 



* Waitz, p. 252-254. Aristotle and Plato are known to not a few 
Mohammedans in the interior. Earth, in his " Travels in Central Afri- 
ca," vol. v., p. 63, mentions that Sidi Mohammed, of Timbuctoo, main- 
tained that they were both Mussulmans — that is to say, worshipers of the 
true God. Cf. vol. iii., p. 373, for the case of a Pullo at Massera, who 
had read Plato and Aristotle in Arabic, was well acquainted with the his- 
tory of Spain, and sympathized with the Wahhabees. 



MORAL BENEFITS IN AFRICA. Q\ 

tee, which have become to a man Mohammedans, and 
have raised themselves infinitely in the process ; and the 
very name of Salt-water Mohammedans given to those 
tribes along the coast who, from admixture with Euro- 
pean settlers, have relaxed the severity of the Prophet's 
laws, is a striking proof of the extent to which the 
stricter form of the faith prevails in the far interior. 

It is melancholy to contrast with these wide-spread 
beneficial influences of Mohammedanism the little that 
has been done for Africa till very lately by the Chris- 
tian nations that have settled in it, and the still narrow- 
er limits within which it has been confined. Till a few 
years ago the good effects produced beyond the immedi- 
ate territories occupied by them were absolutely noth- 
ing. The achievement of Yasco de Gama, for which 
Te Deums were sung in Europe, proved for centuries 
to be nothing but the direst curse to Africa. If the 
oceanic slave-trade has been, to the eternal credit of 
England in particular, at last abolished by Christian na- 
tions, it can not be forgotten that Africa owes also to 
them its origin, and on the West Coast, at all events, its 
long continuance. The message that European traders 
have carried for centuries to Africa has been one of ra- 
pacity, of cruelty, and of bad faith. It is a remark of 
Dr. Livingstone's * that the only art that the natives of 

* Livingstone's " Expedition to the Zambesi," p. 240. 



62 MOHAMMED AND MOHAMMEDANISM. 

Africa have acquired from their five hundred years' ac- 
quaintance with the Portuguese has been the art of dis- 
tilling spirits from a gun-barrel ; and that the only per- 
manent belief they owe to them is the belief that man 
may sell his brother man ; for this, he says emphatically, 
is not a native belief, but is only to be found in the track 
of the Portuguese. The stopping of the oceanic slave- 
trade by England is an enormous benefit to Africa ; but, 
if we except the small number of converts made within 
the limits of their settlements, it has been the only bene- 
fit conferred by Europeans. The extension of African 
commerce is of more than doubtful benefit at present. 
The chief articles that we export from thence are the 
produce of slave-labor, and, what is worse, of a vastly 
extended slave-trade, in the inaccessible interior.* 

Nor is it wholly without reason that, in spite of Krapf 
and Moffat, of Baker, of Frere, and of Livingstone, and 
of a score of other single-hearted and energetic philan- 
thropists, the white man is still an object of terror, and 
his professed creed an object of suspicion and repug- 

* For the introduction, or rather the invention, of the slave-trade 
by the Portuguese in the year 1444, see Helps's "Spanish Conquest in 
America," vol. i., p. 35, seq., and the quotation there given from the 
Chronicle of Azurara, relating the capture of two hundred Africans by a 
Portuguese company at Lagos, and their shipment to Portugal. A disas- 
trous precedent from that time down to the end of the last century, only 
too fatally followed by all the Christian nations of Europe which had the 
chance. 



WHAT HAVE CHRISTIANS DONE IN AFRICA? Qg 

nance, to the negro race. Truly, if the question must 
be put, whether it is Mohammedan or Christian nations 
that have as yet done most for Africa, the answer must 
be that it is not the Christian. And if it be asked, 
again, not what religion is the purest in itself and 
ideally the best — for to this there could be but one an- 
swer — but which, under the peculiar circumstances — 
historical, geographical, and ethnological— is the relig- 
ion most likely to get hold on a vast scale of the na- 
tive mind, and so in some measure to elevate the sav- 
age character, the same answer must be returned. The 
question is, indeed, already half answered by a glance 
at the map of Africa. Mohammedanism has already 
leavened almost the whole of Africa to within five de- 
grees of the equator ; and, to the south of it, Uganda, 
the most civilized state in that part of Central Africa, 
has just become Mohammedan.* Last year, a mosque 

* See some interesting remarks by Mr. Francis Galton at a meeting of 
the British Association at Leeds, on Sept. 22, 1873. I have also to thank 
him for giving me, in conversation, his experience of Mohammedanism in 
Africa, and for directing me to the best authorities on the subject. Along 
the coast-line Mohammedanism of a degraded kind has of course extend- 
ed much farther south, beyond Zanzibar to Mozambique and the Portu- 
guese colonies. There are Mohammedans to be found even among the 
Kaffirs and in Madagascar. The original Portuguese settlers found the 
Arabs established along the coasts of Mozambique and in the interior. 
They exterminated the former ; but as they failed to dispossess the latter, 
it is possible that sqme of the terra incognita in the interior may be still 
Mohammedan. 



64 MOHAMMED AND MOHAMMEDANISM. 

was built on the shores of the Victoria Nyanza itself, 
and the Nile, from its source to its mouth, is now, with 
very few exceptions, a Mohammedan river. 

That Mohammedanism may, when mutual misunder- 
standings are removed, as I hope to show in a future 
Lecture, be elevated, chastened, purified by Christian in- 
fluences and a Christian spirit, and that evils such as 
the slave-trade, which are really foreign to its nature, 
can be put down by the heroic efforts of Christian phi- 
lanthropists, I do not doubt ; and I can, therefore, look 
forward, if with something of anxiety, with still more 
of hope, to what seems the destiny of Africa, that Pa- 
ganism and Devil-worship will die out, and that the 
main part of the continent, if it can not become Chris- 
tian, will become, what is next best to it, Mohammedan. 

Anyhow, it is certain that the gains of Mohammed- 
anism, in Africa alone, counterbalance its apparent loss- 
es from Russian conquests, and from proselytism every 
where else ; nor can I believe, notwithstanding predic- 
tions inspired by the wish, that its work is yet done, 
or nearly done, in any of the countries that have ever 
owned its sway. 

I speak of the apparent losses from Russian conquest, 
for the onward march of the Russian Colossus through 
Central Asia, so far from carrying any form of Christi- 
anity with it, seems to intensify the religious convictions 



REVIVAL IN ARMENIA. g5 

of the half -conquered or threatened races. What was 
dead in the religion before, it revives; to what was 
only half alive, it gives fresh vigor. Islam has now be- 
come with them a patriotism as well as a creed ; and 
Mr. Gifford Palgrave, an able and accurate observer, 
has lately described how the distinctive precepts of the 
Mohammedan religion — those enjoining the observance 
of the month of Ramadhan, the reading of the Koran, 
the pilgrimage of the Hadj, the abstinence from gam- 
ing, from tobacco, and from intoxicating drinks— are 
now much more rigidly observed in the debatable ter- 
ritories ; and, more than this, the Abkhasians with their 
immemorial antiquity, and the heroic Circassians driven 
from their homes after a desperate struggle by Musco- 
vite oppression and bad faith, dropping such traces of 
Christianity as they had, but carrying with them a leg- 
acy of immortal hate to the creed and country of their 
tyrants, have crossed the frontier of the more liberal 
Turkish Empire, and, coalescing with Koords, Turko- 
mans, and Arabs, have settled down in the uplands of 
Armenia, and are there forming the nucleus of a new 
and vigorous and united Mohammedan nation.* 

In India, where the two religions are brought face to 
face, and where, if any where, we may expect the great 

* Palgrave's " Essays on Eastern Questions," iv. and v. 



66 MOHAMMED AND MOHAMMEDANISM. 

drama to play itself out, Mohammedanism gives no 
sign of yielding. Unlike Brahmanism, which the thou- 
sand influences of Western civilization are sapping in 
every direction, Mohammedanism, on the contrary, seems 
to concentrate the strength it already has, and, owing to 
the efforts of its zealous missionaries, is giving symptoms 
at once of a Revival and of a Reform that may, at any 
time, change the religious destinies of the country. The 
Faithful are as courageous, as sincere, as ardently mon- 
otheistic as they ever were ; witness it in the Indian Mu- 
tiny, the Wahhabee Revival, and the last terrible argu- 
ment of assassination. The heroism and self-devotion 
of our missionaries seems to be wasted on them in vain, 
and except in individual cases I see no sign that it will 
ever be otherwise. Buddhism and Brahmanism may be 
driven out of India, but Mohammedanism never, except 
by the Mohammedan method of the sword.* 

Such are the leading facts of Mohammedanism viewed 
from the outside ; and now how are we to account for 
them ? 

One thing is certain, that the explanations so readily 
offered by historians and Christian apologists till within 
a very recent period will not suffice now. People who 
think they have nothing to do with a system except to 

* See Appendix to Lecture I. 



ISLAM IN INDIA. 67 

attack it, are not those who can best explain the causes 
of its vitality or its success. One historian tells us that 
Mohammedanism triumphed by the mere force of arms ; 
another, by the use Mohammed made of the tendency 
so deeply planted in man to fall victims in masses to any 
well-conceived imposture ; a third traces his success to 
his skillful plagiarisms from faiths purer than his own ; 
and a fourth to the elevated morality, or to the lax mo- 
rality, inculcated in the Koran — for both of these are 
strangely enough urged almost in the same breath by 
the same people ; while, lastly, others dwell on the in- 
herent strength of the founder's character, and the en- 
thusiasm that must accompany a crusade against idol- 
atry.* We feel that most of these have some truth in 
them, some of them have much ; and one or two of them 
are not only not true, but they are the very reverse of 
the truth. But we also feel that none of them singly, 
nor all of them together, adequately account for the 
phenomena they profess to explain. 

In treating of Mohammedanism, as remarked by M. 
Barthelemy St. Hilaire,f we have to try in limine to 
discard alike our national and our religious prejudices. 
It was not till Mohammedanism had existed for eight 



* See some of these explanations admirably dealt with by F. D. Maurice, 

Keligions of the World," Lecture I. 

t "Mahomet et le Koran," Preface, p. 6, 



68 MOHAMMED AND MOHAMMEDANISM, 

hundred years that it was possible to discard the one, 
and not till very lately that it was even attempted to 
discard the other. Since the conquest of Constantinople, 
or rather since the brilliant naval victory of Don John 
of Austria at Lepanto, and its final repulse by John 
Sobieski from the walls of Vienna two hundred and 
thirty years later, Mohammedanism has ceased, in Eu- 
rope at least, to be an aggressive and conquering power; 
and since then it has been possible for the states of 
Christendom to breathe more freely, and to forget the 
infidel in the ally or the subject. 

Religious prejudice is more difficult to overcome. 
Men who are ardently attached to their own religion 
find it difficult to judge another dispassionately, and 
from a neutral point of view. The philosopher who, 
according to Gibbon's famous aphorism, looked upon all 
religions of the Roman Empire as equally false, and 
the magistrate who looked upon all as equally useful, 
would be alike incapacitated for viewing the Mussulman 
creed from the Mussulman stand-point. Perhaps the 
populace, who looked upon all religions as equally true, 
would have been the best judge of the three; but I 
doubt whether in this, as in most epigrammatic sentences, 
something of truth has not been sacrificed to the an- 
tithesis. Nature does not arrange herself in antithetical 
groups for our convenience ; and I doubt whether the 



NATIONAL AND RELIGIOUS PREJUDICES. (39 

mass of any people, at any time, have looked upon all 
religions as equally true. 

But the comparative study of religion is beginning to 
teach, at all events, the more thoughtful of mankind, 
not indeed that all religions are equally true or equally 
elevating, but that all contain some truth ; that no re- 
ligion is exclusively good, none exclusively bad ; that any 
religion which has a real and continued hold on a large 
body of mankind must satisfy a real spiritual need, and 
is so far good. God is in all his works, and not the 
least so in the thoughts and aspirations of his creatures 
toward himself ; and what we have to do is to feel after 
him in each and all, assured that he is there, even if hap- 
ly in our ignorance we can find no trace of him. 

Truly, when we are dealing with religion at all, even 
though it be Polytheism or Fetichism, we are " treading 
upon holy ground ; 15 and in order that we may treat that 
creed, sublime in its simplicity, which is our special sub- 
ject, with that union of candor and of reverence which 
alone befits it, it is necessary before concluding this in- 
troductory Lecture that I should lay down clearly one 
principle which must guide us in our investigation. 

It is this, that for the purposes of scientific investiga- 
tion, religions must be regarded as differing from one 
another in degree rather than in kind. This is the one 
postulate, itself the result of a careful induction, upon 



70 MOHAMMED AND MOHAMMEDANISM. 

which alone the existence of any true science of religion 
must depend. Without a clear perception of this truth, 
you enter upon the study of the religions of the world 
with a preconceived idea, which will color all your con- 
clusions, and will invalidate them the more gravely the 
more favorable those conclusions are to your own creed. 
The ordinary distinctions of kind, therefore, drawn be- 
tween true and false, natural and supernatural, revealed 
and unrevealed religions are, for our present purpose, 
unreal and misleading. The fact is that from one point 
of view all religions are more or less natural, from an- 
other all are more or less supernatural; and all alike 
are to be treated from the same stand-point, and investi- 
gated by the same methods. In the Science of Religion, 
to quote an expression of Max Muller's used in this place, 
Christianity " owns no prescriptive rights, and claims no 
immunities." It challenges the freest inquiry ; and as 
it claims to come from God himself, so it fears not the 
honest use of any faculties that God has given to man. 
Christianity is indeed a revelation, and what it really 
reveals is true ; and, so far, if the alternative must needs 
be put in this shape, no Christian would have any doubt 
in which category to place his own creed. 

But does Christianity, claim any such monopoly of 
what is good and true as is implied in this crude classifi- 
cation, or will any one say that there is no real revela- 



DO RELIGIONS DIFFER IN KIND? fl 

tion of God in the noble lives of Confucius or Buddha, 
and no fragments of divine truth in the pure morality 
of the systems which they founded ? Truth, happily 
for man, is myriad-sided, and happy he who can catch 
a far-off glance of the one side of it presented to him ! 
Claim, if you like, for the Bible what the Koran does 
claim for itself and the Bible does not — a rigid or a 
verbal inspiration. Grant that the truth revealed passed 
mechanically through the mind of the sacred writer 
without contamination and without alloy, yet who can 
say that, since the Verities with which religion deals are 
all beyond the world of sense, the precise meaning at- 
tached by him to any one word in his creed is the same 
as that attached to it by any other ? — quot homines tot 
sententice. The recipient subject colors every object of 
sensation or of thought as it passes into it, and is con- 
scious of that object, not as it entered, but as it has been 
instantaneously and unconsciously transformed in the 
alembic of the mind. In religion, as in external nature, 
the human mind is, as Bacon says, an unequal mirror to 
the rays of things, mixing its own nature indissolubly 
with theirs. And this relative element once admitted 
into religion at all, it follows that to divide religions by 
an impassable barrier into true and false, natural and 
revealed, is like dividing music into sacred and secular, 
and history into sacred and profane. It is a division 



72 MOHAMMED AND MOHAMMEDANISM. 

convenient enough for those — the majority of the human 
race — who are content with an artificial classification, 
and who care for no religion but their own ; but, for 
scientific purposes, it is a cross division, it begs the ques- 
tion at issue, and is as unphilosophical as it is mislead- 
ing* 

Nor do Sacred Books, whatever be the theory of in- 
spiration on which they rest, lend to the religion to 
which they belong any distinction of kind ; they fix the 
phraseology of a religion, and we are apt to believe that 
they also fix the thought. They do not do so, however. 
The "poetic and literary terms thrown out,"f to use 
Mr. Matthew Arnold's happy expression, by the highest 
minds at the highest objects of thought, as faint approx- 
imations only to the truth respecting them, become en- 
shrined in the Sacred Canon. They are misunderstood, 
or half understood, even by those w T ho hear them from 
the Psalmist's or the Prophet's own lips, and in a few 
years the misunderstanding grows till it becomes fixed 
and rigid4 Poetic imagery is mistaken for scientific 



* For a full discussion of the ordinary methods of classifying religion, 
see Max Miiller's "Science of Religion," p. 123-143. 

t "Literature and Dogma," passim; but see especially p. 38-41 and 58. 

% For admirable illustrations of this, see "Literature and Dogma," cap. 
ii. and v., p. 123. This part of Mr. Arnold's work, it may be pretty con- 
fidently asserted, is done once for all ; and its influence will be felt, avow- 
edly or not, throughout the domain of Biblical criticism. 



INFLUENCE OF SACRED BOOKS. 73 

exactness, and dim outlines for exhaustive definitions. 
A virtue is attached to the words themselves, and the 
thought, which is the jewel, is hidden by the letter, 
which is only the casket. If it be true that man never 
knows how anthropomorphic he himself is, still less do 
sacred writers know the anthropomorphism and the 
materialism which will eventually be drawn even from 
their highest and most spiritual utterances. How little 
did the author of the prayer at the dedication of the 
Temple of Solomon — the grandest assertion, perhaps, 
in the Old Testament of the infinite power and the in- 
finite goodness of God, his nearness to us and his dis- 
tance from us — imagine that the time would ever come 
when it would be held that in that Temple alone, and 
by Jews alone, men could worship the Father ! 

Christians may and must rise from an impartial 
study of the religions of the world with their belief 
vastly deepened that their Sacred Books stand as a 
whole on a far higher level than other Sacred Books, 
and that the ideal life of Christianity, while it is capa- 
ble of including the highest ideals of other creeds, can 
not itself be attained by any one of them. But the 
value of this belief will be exactly proportioned to the 
extent to which they have been able, for the purposes 
of scientific duty, to divest themselves of any arbitrary 
assumption in the matter ; and they must also acknowl- 

D 



74 MOHAMMED AND MOHAMMEDANISM. 

edge that it is possible and natural for sincere Moham- 
medans or Buddhists to arrive at the same conclusions 
concerning their own faiths. It is not easy to be thor- 
oughly convinced of this, or to act upon it; for intol- 
erance is the "natural weed of the human bosom/ 5 and 
there is no religion which does not seem superstitious 
to those who do not believe in it.* 

But this belief is far from necessitating in practical 
life a religious indifference ; nor, however it may seem 
so at first sight, is it averse to all missionary efforts. 
Missionaries will not cease to exist, nor will they lose 
their energy, their enthusiasm, and their self-sacrifice. 
But they will go to work in a different way, will view 
other religions in a different light, and will test their 
success by a different standard. They will no doubt 
be forced to acquiesce in what seems the will of Provi- 
dence, that a national religion is as much a part of 
man's nature as is the genius of his language or the 
color of his skin ; they will admit that the precise form 
of a creed is a matter of prejudice and of circumstance 
with most of us, and that, in spite of the rise of his- 
torical religions which have shattered other faiths and 



* See Grote, vol. vi., p. 156, seq., on the death of Socrates. The boast 
of Cicero, "Majores nostri superstitionem a religione separaverunt " (De 
Nat. Deorum, ii., 28), is the natural belief of every one, even of the Fetich- 
worshiper, concerning his own, and none but his own, creed. 



MISSIONARY WORK. 75 

risen upon their ruins, nine tenths of the whole human 
race have died, and will in all probability continue to 
die, in the profession of that faith into which they were 
born ; but this will no longer seem to them, as it must 
seem now, a mysterious and overwhelming victory of 
evil over good, which appalls the moral sense, and, if 
a man be not better than the letter of his creed, must 
tend to shake at once his belief in the universal Father- 
hood of God and the true brotherhood of humanity; 
they will rather, in proportion to the strength of their 
belief in the goodness of God, believe that his creat- 
ures can not grope after him, even in the dark, without 
getting that light which is sufficient, for them ; they 
will not seek to eradicate wholly any existing national 
faith, if only it be a living one ; nor, as the phrase is, 
will they aim at " bringing its adherents over to Chris- 
tianity ;" they will seek rather to bring Christianity to 
them, to infuse a Christian spirit into what is, at worst, 
not an anti-Christian, but merely a non-Christian, or, it 
may be, a half-Christian faith. 

The Apostles did not cease to be Jews because they 
became Christians, or to look up to Moses less because 
they reverenced Christ more. And yet the difference 
between Judaism and Christianity, between the forms 
and the ceremonies and the exclusiveness of the one, 
and the spirituality and the freedom and the universal- 



76 MOHAMMED AND MOHAMMEDANISM. 

ity of the other, is at least as great, as I hope to show, 
as the difference between a sincere believer in the 
teachings of the Prophet of Arabia and a humble fol- 
lower of the character of Christ. 

St. Paul, the one model given us in the New Testa- 
ment of what a missionary should be, in dealing with 
the faith of a cultivated people much dissimilar to his 
own — a faith, most people would say now, differing in 
kind as well as in degree from Christianity — never 
thought himself of drawing so broad a distinction be- 
tween the two. He might well have been disposed to 
do so, for the Polytheism of Athens had long ceased 
to be an adequate expression of the highest religious 
life of the people. It was in its decadence even when 
it had inspired the profoundest utterances of ^Eschylas 
or Sophocles ; it could not have inspired them then, 
even had there existed genius like theirs to be inspired. 
Its oracles were dumb; and jet St. Paul dropped not 
a word of scorn for the echoes that still lingered and 
the flames that were still flickering on its shattered 
altars. He did not talk of false gods or of devil-wor- 
ship, of imposture or of superstition. Those whom our 
translation calls "superstitious" he calls "God-fearing." 
He quotes their great authors with sympathy and with 
respect. He professes only to give articulate utterance 
to their own thoughts, and to declare more fully to 



EXAMPLE OF ST. PA UL. 77 

them that God whom, unknowingly, they already wor- 
shiped. 

And so, again, in writing to the converts to be found 
even in the metropolis of the world, and, it must be 
added, the head-quarters of its vices, while he lashes its 
moral iniquities and its religious corruptions with an 
unsparing hand, yet, with a toleration wholly alien to 
the Jewish race, and without forfeiting his supreme 
allegiance to his Master, he strikes at the root of the 
impassable distinction between revealed and unrevealed 
religion, by pointing out that those who, not having the 
law, yet did by nature the things contained in the law, 
were in truth a law unto themselves. He showed that 
the Eternal could reveal himself as well by his unwrit- 
ten as bv his written law, and that the voice of con- 
science is, in very truth, to every one who follows it, 
the voice of the living God. 

The missionaries of the future, therefore, will try to 
penetrate to the common elements which, they will 
have learned, underlie all religions alike, and make 
the most of those. They will be able, with a sympathy 
w 7 hich is real because it is drawn from a knowledge 
of the history of their own faith, to point out the 
abuses which have crept, and always will creep, into 
an originally spiritual creed. They will inculcate in 
their teaching and exhibit in their lives, as they do 



78 MOHAMMED AND MOHAMMEDANISM. 

now, something of that highest morality which they 
have learned from their Master, and which they will 
then have learned is the very essence of their faith, 
and which, in its broad outlines at least, in the "secret" 
as well as in the "method" of Jesus,* may adapt itself 
to the wants of every nation and every creed. 

They will never, therefore, think it necessary to pre- 
sent Christianity to those of an alien creed as a collec- 
tion of defined yet mysterious doctrines, which must be 
accepted whole or not at all ; but will rather be content 
to show them Christ himself as he appeared to his ear- 
liest disciples — before the mists of metaphysics had 
gathered around his head, and the watchwords of the- 
ology had half hidden him from the view — glorious in 
his moral beauty, sublime in his self-surrender, divine 
in his humanity and by reason of it. And they may 
then leave it to the moral sense of some, at least, in 
every section of the race, whose greatest glory and Ideal 



* " Literature and Dogma," p. 343. " Of the all-importance of right- 
eousness there is a knowledge in Mohammedanism, but of the method 
and secret of Jesus, by which alone is righteousness possible, hardly any 
sense at all." There is substantial truth in this; but few can read Mr. 
Arnold's own account of what he conceives the secret and method of 
Jesus to have been, without feeling that all the higher religions of the 
world — any religion, in fact, which, controlling the lower part of man's 
nature and stimulating the higher, makes him to be at peace with him- 
self, which gives hope in adversity, and calmness in the prospect of death 
— must contain much both of the one and of the other. 



HOW MAY CHRISTIANITY SPREAD? 79 

Representative he is, to judge of liim aright, and to 
recognize in his person the supreme and the final Rev- 
elation of God. Here, in the ambition to set before the 
eyes of all a higher Ideal, and a more perfect example 
than any they have yet known ; in the proclamation of 
the truth, which Christ came to proclaim, of the uni- 
versal Fatherhood, and the perfect love of God — here 
is ample work for the enthusiasm of humanity ; in this 
sense Christ may live again upon the earth, and in this 
sense, and only in this, is it likely that Christianity will 
overspread the world. I have premised this much, even 
at the risk of anticipating some of the conclusions to 
which we shall, I believe, ultimately come, because I 
think it necessary to prevent any misunderstanding as 
to my point of view. 

"E£ olwv olog ; how far the way was prepared for Mo- 
hammed by circumstances, and what part he himself 
bore in the great revolution that goes by his name ; 
what we are to say on the nature of his mission, on the 
much-disputed question of his sincerity, of the incon- 
sistencies in his career and the blots upon it, this will 
form the subject of my next Lecture. 



LECTURE II. 



Febeuaey 21, 1874. 



MOHAMMED. 

MsyaXiov eavrbv a^iol a%iog wv. — ARISTOTLE. 

There goeth the son of Abdallah, who hath his conversation in the 
heavens. — The Koreishites. 

A complete history of the opinions that have been 
held by Christians about Mohammed and Mohammed- 
anism would not be an uninstructive chapter, however 
melancholy, in the history of the human mind. To 
glance for a moment at a few of them. 

During the first few centuries of Mohammedanism, 
Christendom could not afford to criticise or explain ; it 
could only tremble and obey. But when the Saracens 
had received their first check in the heart of France, 
the nations which had been flying before them faced 
around, as a herd of cows will sometimes do when the 
single dog that has put them to flight is called off; and 
though they did not yet venture to fight, they could 
at least calumniate their retreating foe. Drances-like, 



MEDIAEVAL VIEW OF MOHAMMED. 81 

they could manufacture calumnies and victories at 
pleasure : 

"Quae tuto tibi magna volant; dum distinet hostem 
Agger murorum, nee inundant sanguine fossae." 

The disastrous retreat of Charles the Great through 
Roncesvalles is turned by romance-mongers and trou- 
badours into a signal victory ; Charles, who never, went 
beyond Pannonia, is credited, in the following century, 
with a successful crusade to the Holy Sepulchre, and 
even with the sack of Babylon ! The age of Christian 
chivalry had not yet come, and was not to come for 
two hundred years. 

In the romance of " Turpin," quoted by Penan, 
Mohammed, the fanatical destroyer of all idolatry, is 
turned himself into an idol of gold, and, under the 
name of Mawmet, is reported to be the object of wor- 
ship at Cadiz ; and this not even Charles the Great, 
Charles the Iconoclast, the destroyer of the Irmansul 
in his own native Germany, would venture to attack 
from fear of the legion of demons which guarded it. 
In the song of Roland, the national epic of France, 
referring to the same events, Mohammed appears with 
the chief of the Pagan Gods on the one side of him, and 
the chief of the Devils on the other; a curious antici- 
pation, perhaps, of the view of Satanic inspiration taken 
by Sir William Mnir. Marsilles, "Kaliph of Cordova, 

D2 



82 MOHAMMED AND MOHAMMEDANISM. 

is supposed to worship him as a god, and his favorite 
form of adjuration is made to be "By Jupiter, by Mo- 
hammed, and by Apollyon" — strange metamorphosis 
and strange collocation ! Human sacrifices are offered 
to him, if nowhere else indeed, in the imagination and 
assertions of Christian writers of the tenth and eleventh 
centuries, under the various names of Bafum, or Ma- 
phomet, or Mawmet; and in the same spirit Malater- 
ra, in his " History of Sicily," describes that island as 
being, when under Saracenic rule, "a land wholly given 
to idolatry,"* and the expedition of the Norman Roger 
Guiscard is characterized as being a crusade against 
idolatry. Which people were the greater idolaters, any 
candid reader of the Italian annalists of this time, col- 
lected by Muratori, can say. It is not a little curious 
that both the English and French languages still bear 
witness to the popular misapprehension : the French 
by the word "Mahomerie;" the English by the word 
"mummery," still used for absurd or superstitious rites.f 
Nor has a Mohammedan nothing to complain of in the 
etymology and history, little known or forgotten, of 
the words "Mammetry"J and "Paynim," "termagant" 

* Bk. ii., p. 1. " Terram idolis deditam." 
f Kenan, " Etudes d'Histoire Religieuse," p. 223, note. * 
% Mammetry, a contraction of Manometry, used in early English for 
any false religion, especially for a worship of idols, insomuch that Mam- 



MISCONCEPTIONS SHOWN BY LANGUAGE. 83 

and " miscreant ;" but to these I can only refer in pass- 
ing. 

In the twelfth century " the god Mawrnet passes into 
the heresiarch Mahomet," * and, as such, of course he 
occupies a conspicuous place in the " Inferno." Dante 
places him in his ninth circle among the sowers of re- 
ligious discord ; his companions being Fra Dolcino, a 
communist of the fourteenth century, and Bertrand de 
Born, a fighting troubadour: his flesh is torn piecemeal 
from his limbs by demons, who repeat their round in 
time to re-open the half-healed wounds. The romances 
of Baphomet. so common in the fourteenth and fifteenth 
centuries, attribute any and every crime to him, just as 
the Athanasians did to Arius. "He is a debauchee, a 
camel stealer, a cardinal, who, having failed to obtain 
the object of every cardinal's ambition, invents a new 
religion to revenge himself on his brethren !"f 

met or Mawmet came to mean an idol. In Shakespeare the name is 
extended to mean a doll : Juliet, for instance, is called by her father " a 
whining mammet." See Trench " On Words," p. 112. Paynim=Pagan 
or Heathen. Termagant, a term applied now only to a brawling woman, 
was originally one of the names given to the supposed idol of the Moham- 
medans. Miscreant, originally "a man who believes otherwise," acquired 
its moral significance from the hatred of the Saracens which accompanied 
the Crusades. The story of Blue Beard, the associations connected with 
the name "Mahound," and the dislike of European chivalry in mediaeval 
times for the mare — the favorite animal of the Arabs — are other indica- 
tions of the same thing. 

* Renan, loc. cit. t Renan, p. 224. 



84 MOHAMMED AND MOHAMMEDANISM. 

With the leaders of the Reformation, Mohammed, the 
greatest of all Reformers, meets with little sympathy, 
and their hatred of him, as perhaps was natural, seems 
to vary inversely as their knowledge. Luther doubts 
whether he is not worse than Leo ; Melanchthon believes 
him to be either Gog or Magog, and probably both.* 
The Reformers did not see that the Papal party, fasten- 
ing on the hatred of priestcraft and formalism, which 
was common doubtless to Islam and to Protestantism, 
would impute to both a common hatred of Christianity, 
even as the Popes had accused the iconoclastic Emper- 
ors of Constantinople eight centuries before. 

Now, too, arose the invention — the maliciousness of 
which was only equaled by its stupidity, but believed 
by all who w T ished to believe it — of the dove trained to 
gather peas placed in the ear of Mohammed,f that peo- 
ple might believe that he was inspired by the Holy 
Ghost — inspired, it would seem, by the very Being 
whose separate existence it was the first article of his 
creed to deny ! In the imagination of Biblical com- 
mentators later on, and down to this very day, he di- 
vides with the Pope the credit or discredit of being 



* See " Quarterly Keview," Art. Islam, by Deutsch, No. 254, p. 296. 

t A similar story is told of the great Schamyl ; only in this case it is 
Mohammed himself who takes the form of a dove, and imparts his com- 
mands to the hero. 



SUPPOSED SUBJECT OF PROPHECY. g5 

the subject of special prophecy in the books of Daniel 
and the Revelation, that magnificent series of tableaux, 
a part of which, on the principle that*" a prophecy may 
mean whatever comes after it," has been tortured into 
agreement with each successive act of the drama of his- 
tory ; while, from another part, lovers of the mysterious 
have attempted to cast, and, in spite of disappointment, 
will always continue to cast, the horoscope of the fut- 
ure. He is Antichrist, the Man of Sin, the Little Horn, 
and I know not what besides ; nor do I think that a 
single writer, with the one strange exception of the Jew 
Maimonides, till toward the middle of the eighteenth 
century, treats of him as otherwise than a rank impos- 
tor and a false prophet. " 

France and England may, perhaps, divide the credit 
of having been the first to take a different view, and to 
have begun that critical study of Arabian history or lit- 
erature which, in the hands of Gibbon and of Muir, of 
Caussin de Perceval and of St. Hilaire, of Weil and of 
Sprenger, has put the materials for a fair and unbiased 
judgment within the reach of every one. Most other 
writers of the eighteenth century, such as Dean Prid- 
eaux and the Abbe Maracci, Boulainvilliers and Vol- 
taire, and some subsequent Bampton lecturers and Ar- 
abic professors, have approached the subject only to 
prove a thesis. Mohammed was to be either a hero 



SQ MOHAMMED AND MOHAMMEDANISM. 

or an impostor; they have held a brief either for the 
prosecution or the defense ; and from them, therefore, 
we learn much that has been said about Mohammed, 
but comparatively little of Mohammed himself. 

The founder of the reaction was Gagnier, a French- 
man by birth, but an Englishman by adoption. Edu- 
cated in Navarre, where he had early shown a mastery 
of more than one Semitic language, he became Canon 
of St. Genevieve at Paris ; on a sudden he turned Prot- 
estant, came to England, and attacked Catholicism with 
all the zeal of a recent convert. Having been appoint- 
ed to the Chair of Arabic at Oxford, he proceeded to 
write a history of Mohammed, founded on the work of 
Abul Feda, the earliest and most authentic of Arabic 
historians then known. 

The translations of the Koran into two different Eu- 
ropean languages by Sale and Savary soon followed ; 
and from these works, combined with the vast number 
of facts contained in Sale's Introductory Discourse, 
Gibbon, who was not an Arabic scholar himself, drew 
the materials for his splendid chapter, the most mas- 
terly of his " three masterpieces of biography " — Atha- 
nasius, Julian, and Mohammed. " He has descended 
on the subject in the fullness of his strength," has been 
inspired by it, and has produced a sketch which, in spite 
of occasional uncalled-for sarcasms and characteristic 



REACTION IN FAVOR OF MOHAMMED. 87 

inuendoes, must be the delight and despair even of 
those who have access, as we now have, thanks espe- 
cially to Sprenger and Muir, to vast stores of informa- 
tion denied to him. But Gibbon's unfair and unphilo- 
sophic treatment of Christianity has, perhaps, prevented 
the world from doing justice to his generally fair and 
philosophic treatment of Mohammedanism ; and, as a 
consequence of this, most Englishmen, who do not con- 
demn the Arabian prophet unheard, derive what favor- 
able notions of him they have, not from Gibbon, but 
from Carlyle. Make as large deductions as we will on 
the score of Carlyle's peculiar views on "Heroes and 
Hero-worship," how many of us can recall the shock of 
surprise, the epoch in our intellectual and religious life, 
when we found that he chose for his " Hero as proph- 
et," not Moses, or Elijah, or Isaiah, but the so-called 
impostor Mohammed ! 

I admitted above that the religion of Mohammed 
was in its essence not original. Mohammed never said 
it was : he called it a revival of the old one, a return to 
the primitive creed of Abraham; and there is reason 
to believe that both the great religions of the Eastern 
world existing in his time, Sabseanism, that is, and Ma- 
gianism, had been, in their origin at least, vaguely mono- 
theistic. They had passed through the inevitable stages 
of spirituality, misunderstanding, decline, and, lastly, in- 



88 MOHAMMED AND MOHAMMEDANISM. 

tentional corruption, till the God whom Abraham, ac- 
cording to the well-known Mussulman legend, had been 
the first to worship, because, while he had made the 
stars and sun to rise and set, he never rose nor set 
himself, had withdrawn behind them altogether ; the 
heavenly bodies, from being symbols, had become the 
thing symbolized ; temples were erected in their honor, 
and idols filled the temples. 

And as with Sabseanism, so with Magianism; Ormuzd 
and Ahriman were no longer the principles brought into 
existence, or existing, by the permission of the one true 
God, who, as Zoroaster had taught, would tolerate nei- 
ther temples nor altars nor symbols; worshiped only 
on the hill-tops with the eye of faith, quickened though 
it might be by the glory of the rising or setting sun 
presented to the bodily eye. Fire had itself become the 
Divinity ; and what offering could be more acceptable 
to such a God than the human victim,, overwhelmed by 
the mysterious flame, whose divine power he denied ? 

And combined with these two religions, which had 
been spiritual in their origin, and, probably, more prom- 
inent and popular than either, was the grossest Fetich- 
ism — the worship of actual stocks and stones, or of the 
"«grim array " of three hundred and sixty idols in the 
Kaaba; among which the aerolite — once believed to 
have been of dazzling whiteness, but long since black- 



PREVIOUS RELIGIONS IN ARABIA. §9 

ened by the kisses of sinful men — was at once the most 
ancient and thfc most sacred. 

Nor were Judaism and Christianity themselves un- 
known in Arabia. The destruction of Jerusalem by 
Titus had caused a very general migration of Jews 
from Palestine, southward and eastward, beyond the 
limits of the Roman Empire, and from that time on- 
ward the northern part of Arabia was dotted over by 
Jewish colonies. In the third century a whole Ara- 
bian tribe, even in the south of the Peninsula, had 
adopted the Jewish faith; and the history of Moham- 
med proves that the neighborhood of Yathrib* con- 
tained many Jewish tribes, which, though they main- 
tained in the land of their exile that proud religious 
isolation which was their national birthright, were not 
without their influence on Arab politics. 

As to Christianity, it is possible that the very first 
converts made by St. Paul to the faith which once he 
had destroyed were of Arab blood.f In the fourth 
century we hear of Christian churches at Tzafar and 
at Aden, under the protection of the half-Christianized 
Himyarite king; and the Abyssinian conquest made a 
form of Christianity to be the dominant religion, at all 

* Not called Medina, i. e., Medinat-an-Nabi, " the City of the Prophet," 
till after the Hegira. 

t Epistle to Galatians, i. 17. 



90 MOHAMMED AND MOHAMMEDANISM. 

events in appearance, in Yemen. But neither of these 
religions ever struck deep root in the* Arabian soil : 
either the people were not suited to them, or they were 
not suited to the people. They lived on, on sufferance 
only, till a faith, which to the Arabs should be the more 
living one, should sweep them away. 

Such were the religious conditions under which Mo- 
hammed had to work ; and what were the social con- 
ditions ? Arabia from time immemorial had been split 

j. 

up into a vast number of independent tribes, always at 
war with one another. The scanty sustenance which 
an arid soil yielded they were fain to eke out by trad- 
ing themselves, or by plundering others who conducted 
caravans along the sea-coast of the Hedjaz, to exchange 
the spices and precious stones of India or of Hadra- 
maut or of Yemen with the manufactures of Bozra and 
Damascus. Their hand was against every man, and 
every man's hand was against them ; and a prophecy 
is hardly needed to explain the fact that an impenetra- 
ble country was never penetrated by* foreign conquer- 
ors. Nor were they as uncivilized as has often been 
supposed. They were as passionately fond of poetry 
as they were of war and plunder. What the Olympic 
Games did for Greece in keeping up the national feel- 
ing, as distinct from tribal independence, in giving a 
brief cessation from hostilities, and acting as a literary 



ARAB POETRY AND CHIVALRY. 91 

centre, that the annual fairs at Okatz and Mujanna 
were to Arabia. Here tribes made up their dissen- 
sions, exchanged prisoners of war, and, most important 
of all, competed with one another in extempore poetic 
contests. Even in the " times of ignorance," each tribe 
produced its own poet - laureate ; and the most ready 
and the best saw his poem transcribed in letters of 
gold,* or suspended on the wall of the entrance of the 
Kaaba, where it would be seen by every pilgrim who 
might visit the most sacred place in the country. There 
was a wild chivalry, too, about them, a contempt of 
danger and a sensibility of honor, which lends a charm 
to all we hear of their loves and their wars, their greed 
and their hospitality, their rapine and their revenge. 
The Bedouin has been the same in these respects in 
all ages. "Be good enough to take off that garment 
of yours," says the Bedouin robber politely to his vic- 
tim ; " it is wanted by my wife ;" and the victim sub- 
mits, with as good a grace as he can muster, to the 
somewhat unreasonable demands of a hypothetical lady. 
El Mutanabi, a poet, prophet, and warrior, three hun- 
dred years after the Hegira, but who no doubt had 

* Called Moallaeat. Sprenger and Deutsch agree that this word means, 
not "suspended," but " strung loosely together," and question the truth 
of the story of the suspension in the " Kaaba." Some of these poems, as, 
for instance, that of the poet Labyd, still survive, and are a standing proof 
of the untaught poetic genius of the Arabs. 



92 MOHAMMED AND MOHAMMEDANISM. 

his prototypes before it, was journeying with his son 
through a country infested by robbers, and proposed to 
seek a place of refuge for the night: "Art thou then 
that Mutanabi," exclaimed his slave, " who wrote these 
lines — 

"'I am known to the night, and the wild and the steed, 
To the guest and the sword, to the paper and the reed?'" 

The poet-warrior felt the stain like a wound, and throw- 
ing himself down to sleep where he then was, met his 
death at the hands of the robbers.* The passion in- 
deed for indiscriminate plunder had, before the time 
of Mohammed, so far given way to the growing love 
of commerce that a kind of Treuga Dei, or Truce of 
God, was observed — in theory at least— during four 
months of the year. But what the law forbade then, 
ex hypothesi it allowed at other times, and it is likely 
that the enforced abstention gave at once the zest of 
novelty and a clear conscience to the purveyors of the 
trade when the four months were over. 

Such, very briefly, was the condition of the Arabs 
when, to use an expression of Voltaire, quoted by Bar- 
thelemy St. Hilaire, " The turn of Arabia" came ; f when 

* Burton's "Pilgrimage to Mecca," vol. iii., p. 60, where he tells this 
story and translates the Arabic lines. See the whole of chap. xxiv. for 
a graphic account drawn from personal observation of Bedouin knight- 
errantry and poetry and generosity. 

t P. 211. See cap. ii., generally, for a description of Pre-Mohammedan 
Arabia. 



COULD ISLAM HAVE BEEN PREDICTED? 93 

the hour had already struck for the most complete, the 
most sudden, and the most extrabrdinary revolution that 
has ever come over any nation upon earth. 

One of the most philosophical of historians has re- 
marked that of all the revolutions which have had a 
permanent influence upon the civil history of mankind, 
none could so little be anticipated by human prudence 
as that effected by the religion of Arabia. And at first 
sight it must be confessed that the Science of History, 
if indeed there be such a science, is at a loss to find 
that sequence of cause and effect which it is the object 
and the test of all history, which is worthy of the name, 
to trace out. 

The Emperor Justinian, not the least shrewd of the 
Byzantine emperors, who, some forty years before, had 
thought it necessary to protect his empire from every 
possible and from many impossible dangers, had neg- 
lected to erect a line of fortresses on the side of his 
empire which, in defiance of nature, really was the most 
vulnerable.* " By a precaution which inspired the cow- 
ardice it foresaw," he had erected a fortress even at 
Thermopylae, where the religio loci would rather have 
called for a Spartan rampart of three hundred men, 
if onty they had been forthcoming. He had kept the 

* Cf. Gibbon, vol. v., p. 102-111. 



94 MOHAMMED AND MOHAMMEDANISM. 

Sclavonians out of Constantinople by one long wall, 
and the Russians out of the Crimea by another ; he had 
fortified Amida and Edessa against the fire-worshipers ; 
had built St. Catharine's, half monastery and half for- 
tress, in the wilderness of Mount Sinai ; and had even 
taken precautions against the savages of ^Ethiopia : but 
he had trusted to the six hundred miles of desert which 
nature had interposed between him and a set of robber 
tribes, intent only on molesting one another. What 
hostile force could pass such an obstacle? 

But we can see now, and Mohammed himself per- 
haps saw, that the ground was in many respects pre- 
pared for a great social and religious revolution. " It 
detracts nothing from the fame of a great man to show, 
so far as we can, how his success was possible."* It is 
only another proof, if proof were wanting, that genius 
is little else than insight joined to sustained effort; the 
eye sees what it brings with it the power of seeing; 
and the great man differs from his contemporaries 
chiefly in this, that he can read the dark riddle of his 
time with an eye a few degrees less obscured than those 
around him. He is the greatest product of his age, but 
he is still its product, and he is only the father of the 
age that is to succeed in so far as he owns his *parent- 

* M. Bartheleiny St. Hilaire, " Mahomet et le Koran," p. 51. 



GREAT MEN AND THEIR INFLUENCE. 95 

age. He marches indeed in front of his age ; but his 
influence will be permanent or fleeting precisely so far 
as he discerns the direction in which it would advance 
at a slower pace without him.* When he tries to go 
beyond this, and to force the world out of its groove 
to adopt hobbies of his own, then begins the region of 
the remote, the selfish, the personal; in this the great 
man fails, and hence the commonplaces on the failure 
of greatness, and the greatness of failure, with which 
we are all familiar. " Perish my name," said Danton, 
" but let the cause triumph ;"f and personal failure of 
this kind is to the great man no failure at all — it is only 
another word for success. The truth is that greatness, 
so far as it is the truest greatness, rarely fails altogether 
of its object; and that failure is great only when the 
end proposed is good, and the human means, though 
inadequate to its attainment, are yet a real advance 
toward it. 

It must be remembered therefore as regards what 
seems the sudden birth of the Arabian nation, fully 
armed, like Athena from the head of Zeus, that the 
annual resort to Mecca for purposes of trade, poetry, 



* Cf. Guizot's " Lectures on History." vol. iii., lect. xx. ; and Mill's 
Review of them in " Dissertations and Discussions," vol. ii., p. 249, 250. 

f A similar saying is attributed to Cavour : "Perish my name and 
memory, so that Italy be made a nation !" 



96 MOHAMMED AND MOHAMMEDANISM. 

and religion, had pointed to the Holy City as to a pos- 
sible metropolis ; and to the Koreishites, the hereditary 
guardians of the Kaaba, as the potential rulers of a fut- 
ure people; while, as regards the new religion, there 
was the groundwork of Monotheism underlying all the 
abuses and corruption of Magianism and Sabaeanism. 
There was also a class of people, called Hanyfs, who 
prided themselves on preserving the original creed of 
Abraham, and even his sacred books ; while Ibn-Ishac,* 
the earliest-known historian of Islam, records a meeting 
of four or five among the Koreishites at which it was 

* He died A.H. 151. His work has been preserved for us in the Sirat- 
er-racoul of Ibn-Hisham, who died in the year of the Hegira 213. The 
fullest and most trustworthy historian, in the judgment of Muir and 
Sprenger, whose writings have come down to us, is the Katib al Wakidy, 
or secretary of the historian Wakidy : died A.H. 207. The MS. was dis- 
covered by Sprenger at Cawnpore. Among other discoveries of Sprenger 
may be mentioned a portion of the biography of Mohammed by Tabari,who 
died A.H. 310, and a complete biographical dictionary, termed Icaba, of 
the companions of Mohammed, compiled by Ibn-Hidjr, in the fifth cent- 
ury, from writers, whose names he gives, of earlier and incontestable au- 
thority. It contains the biographies of some 8000 people. And it may be 
hoped that the government of India, which numbers among its subjects 
more than thirty million Mussulmans, may recognize, if they have not al- 
ready done so, the imperial importance of publishing the three remaining 
folios of the work. Sprenger brought out one volume, but an order of the 
Court of Directors suspended the publication of the rest. See Sprenger, 
Preface, p. 12, where it may be observed how modestly he passes over his 
own great discoveries, and does not even allude to the slight shown the 
work by the Directors. Learned and critical Mohammedans, it would 
seem, do not think so highly of "Wakidy and his secretary as Muir and 
Sprenger do ; they prefer Ibn-Hisham. See Muir, vol. i., p. 77-105. 



PRE-MOHAMMEDANS. 97 

resolved to open a crusade against idolatry, and to seek 
for the original and only true faith ; and they straight- 
way abandoned their homes and spread over the world 
in the quest of this Holy Grail. * 

Mohammedanism therefore is no real exception to 
the principle I have laid down above as to the origin 
of the Historical Eeligions of the world, though, at first 
sight, it may appear to be so. To Mohammed's own 
mind it is quite true that the theological element was 
the predominant and inspiring one, but Mohammed's 
mind itself was the outcome, at least as much as it was 
the cause, of the great revolution which goes by his 
name. There was a general social and religious up- 
heaving at the head of which the Prophet placed him- 
self, and which partly carried him on with it, partly he 
himself carried it on ; the train was already laid, and 
the spark from heaven was all that was needed to set 
the Arab world ablaze. In this sense it is perhaps true, 
as Eenan has remarked and the Koran itself declares, 
that Mohammedanism was preached before the time 
of Mohammed ; but there were Mohammedans before 
Mohammed only in the sense in which there were 
Zoroastrians before Zoroaster, Lutherans before Luther, 
and Christians before Christ. Eenan has himself re- 

* Sprenger, p. 81. These four " inquirers " were Waraka, Othman, 
Abayd, and Zayd. 

E 



98 MOHAMMED AND MOHAMMEDANISM. 

marked elsewhere, though he seems to have forgotten 
it in dealing with Mohammedanism, that the glory of 
a religion belongs to its founder, and not to his prede- 
cessors- or to his successors.* It is easy, he says him- 
self, to try to awake faith, and it is easy to be possessed 
by it when once it has been awakened ; but it is not 
easy to inspire it. It is the grandest gift, a very gift 
of God. 

But though, as I have said, the hour had come, the 
youth of Mohammed gave few signs that he was the 
man. The portents which ushered in his birth, and 
that attended his early youth, are the offspring of an- 

* It seems to me, though I would speak with the utmost diffidence in 
venturing to dissent from the greatest European authority on the subject, 
that Sprenger errs in the same direction as Renan when he says in his 
volume, published at Allahabad (p. 171), that Abu Bakr did more for the 
success of Islam than the Prophet himself; and again (p. 174), after 
enumerating all those who, merely from their vague Monotheism, he calls 
the predecessors of Mohammed, he says that even after Mohammed was 
acknowledged as the messenger of God, Omar had more influence on the 
development of the Islam than Mohammed himself. " The Islam is not 
the work of Mohammed ; it is not the doctrine of the impostor ... it is 
the offspring of the spirit of the time, and the voice of the Arabic nation. 
. . . There is, however, no doubt that the impostor has defiled it by his 
immorality and perverseness of mind." It is fair to say that this tone 
seems somewhat moderated, or even altered in the author's subsequent 
and greater work. Cf., however, vol. ii., p. 83-88. One is inclined to 
ask, if Islam was merely the spirit of the time, who proved himself best 
able to read that spirit ? Was it Abu Bakr and Omar, or was it Moham- 
med that produced the Koran ? And is it their personality, or his, 
which has stamped itself with ineffaceable clearness for all time upon 
the Eastern world ? 



YOUTH OF MOHAMMED, 99 

other country and of a later age. The celestial light 
that beamed in the sky and from his newly opened 
eyes ; the Tigris overflowing its banks ; the palace of 
Chosroes toppling over to the ground ; the sacred fire 
of Zoroaster, which had burned for one thousand 
years, suddenly extinguished ; the mules that talked 
and the sheep that bowed to him, were unknown to the 
contemporaries of Mohammed, and Mohammed him- 
self says nothing of them ! He was a man of few 
words, and he had few friends : notable chiefly for 
his truthfulness and good faith, they called him "Al 
Amyn," the Trusty. His tending his employer's flocks ; 
his journeys to Syria ; possibly his short-lived friend- 
ship there with Sergius or Bahira, a ISTestorian monk ; 
his famous vow to succor the oppressed ; his employ- 
ment by Kadijah in a trade venture, and his subse- 
quent happy marriage with her, are about the only 
noteworthy external incidents in his early life. 

Up to the age of forty there is nothing to show that 
any serious scruple had occurred to him individually 
as to the worship of idols, and in particular of the 
Black Stone, of which his family were the hereditary 
guardians. The sacred month of Eamadhan, like other 
religious Arabs, he observed with punctilious devotion ; 
and he would often retire to the caverns of Mount Hira 
for purposes of solitude, meditation, and prayer. He 



100 MOHAMMED AND MOHAMMEDANISM. 

was melancholic in temperament, to begin with ; he 
was also subject to epileptic fits, upon which Sprenger 
has laid great stress, and described most minutely,* and 
which, whether under the name of the " sacred disease " 
among the Greeks, or "possession by the devil" among 
the Jews, has in most ages and countries been looked 
upon as something specially mysterious or supernat- 
ural. It is possible that his interviews with Nestorian 
monks, with Zeid, or with his wife's cousin Waraka, 
may have turned his thoughts into the precise direc- 
tion they took. Dejection alternated with excitement : 
these gave place to ecstasy or dreams ; and in a dream, 
or trance, or fit, he saw an angel in human form, but 
flooded with celestial light, and displaying a silver roll. 
" Read I" said the angel. " 1 can not read," said Mo- 
hammed. The injunction and the answer were twice 
repeated.f "Read," at last said the angel, "in the 

* Sprenger, vol. i., cap. iii., p. 207. He thinks Mohammed suffered 
from hysteria, followed by catalepsy, rather than epilepsy ; for the Prophet 
does not seem to have lost all consciousness. It is worth remarking that 
Sprenger's medical knowledge is not very favorable in its result to Mo- 
hammed. He starts by saying, p. 210, that all hysterical people have a 
tendency to lying and deceit. This is his major premise. His minor is 
that Mohammed was hysterical, and the inference is obvious. Accord- 
ingly, we are not surprised to find him (vol. i., cap. iv., p. 306, note) 
speaking of the "vision" of the flight to Jerusalem as one "lie," and 
that to the seventh heaven as another lie. 

■ f Cf. Sura xcvi. Deutsch (Islam, p. 30G) renders the word usually 
translated " Read" by " Cry," comparing Isaiah xi. 6. 



CALL TO THE PROPHETIC OFFICE. \Q\ 

name of the Lord, who created man out of a clot of 
blood ; read, in the name of the Most High, who taught 
man the use of the pen, who sheds on his soul the ray 
of knowledge, and teaches him what before he knew 
not." Upon this Mohammed felt the heavenly inspira- 
tion, and read the decrees of God, which he afterward 
promulgated in the Koran. Then came the announce- 
ment, " O Mohammed, of a truth thou art the Prophet 
of God, and I am his angel Gabriel."* 

This was the crisis of Mohammed's life. It was 
his call to renounce idolatry, and to take the office of 
Prophet. Like Isaiah, he could not at first believe 
that so unworthy an instrument could be chosen for 

* Strangely enough, Sir William Muir, vol. ii., p. 89-96, selects this 
period, above all others in Mohammed's life, as the one in which to sug- 
gest his peculiar view that the Prophet's belief in his inspiration was Sa- 
tanic in its origin ; and he supports his view by a somewhat elaborate 
parallel with the temptations which presented themselves to Christ at the 
beginning of his work. Whether such a Deus ex machind is required to 
untie the knot is hardly within my province to inquire, since the whole 
matter is alike incapable of proof and disproof; but it seems pertinent to 
remark, first, that the developed and quasi-scientific conception of such a 
being as Sir William Muir pictures is Persian rather than Jewish in its 
origin, and is found in Palestine only after the Captivity ; and, second- 
ly, that if the spirit of evil did suggest the idea to Mohammed, he never 
so completely outwitted himself, since friend and foe must alike admit 
that it was Mohammed's firm belief in supernatural guidance that lay 
at the root of all he achieved. Without this we should never have 
heard of him except as one of a thousand short-lived Arabian sectaries ; 
with it he created a nation, and revivified a third of the then known 
world. 



102 MOHAMMED AND MOHAMMEDANISM, 

such a purpose. " Woe is me, for I am undone, be- 
cause I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the 
midst of a people of unclean lips ;" but the live coal 
was not immediately taken from the altar and laid 
upon his, as upon Isaiah's lips. Trembling and agi- 
tated, Mohammed tottered to Kadi j ah and told her 
his vision and his agony of mind. He had always 
hated and despised soothsayers, and now, in the irony 
of destiny, it would appear that he was to become a 
soothsayer himself. " Fear not, for joyful tidings dost 
thou bring," exclaimed Kadijah. " I will henceforth 
regard thee as the prophet of our nation." " Re- 
joice," she added, seeing him still cast down; "Al- 
lah will not suffer thee to fall to shame. Hast thou 
not been loving to thy kinsfolk, kind to thy neigh- 
bors, charitable to the poor, faithful to thy word, and 
ever a defender of the truth ?" First the life, and 
then the theology, in the individual as in the tribe and 
the nation. 

But the assurances of the good Kadijah, and the 
conversions of Zeid and Waraka, did not bring the 
live coal from the altar. A long period of hesitation, 
doubt, preparation followed. At one time Mohammed 
even contemplated suicide, and he w r as only restrained by 
an unseen hand, as he might well call the bright vision 
of the future, pictured in one of the earliest Suras of the 



OPPOSITION TO THE PROPHET. 103 

Koran,* when the help of God should come and vic- 
tory, when he " should see the people crowding into the 
one true Faith, and he, the Prophet, should celebrate 
the praise of his Lord, and ask pardon of him, for 
he is forgiving." Three years, the period of the Fa- 
trah, saw only fourteen proselytes attach themselves to 
him. His teaching seemed to make no way beyond 
the very limited circle of his earliest followers. His ris- 
ing hopes were crushed. People pointed the finger of 
scorn at him as he passed by : " There goeth the son 
of Abdallah, who hath his converse with the heavens !" 
They called him a driveler, a star-gazer, a maniac-poet. 
His uncles sneered, and the main body of the citizens 
treated him with that contemptuous indifference which 
must have been harder to him to bear than active per- 
secution. Well might he, to take an illustration sug- 
gested by Sir W. Muir himself, f like Elijah of old, 
go a day's journey into the wilderness, and request for 
himself that he might die, and say, " It is enough, O 
Lord ; now take away my life, for I am not better than 
my fathers ;" or, again, " I have been very jealous for 
the Lord God of hosts, because the people have for- 
saken thy covenant, thrown down thine altars, and 
slain thy prophets with the sword ; and I, even I, 

* Sura ex. t Muir, vol. ii., p. 228. 



104 MOHAMMED AND MOHAMMEDANISM. 

only am left, and they seek my life to take it away." 
At times his distress was insupportable : 

"And had not his poor heart 
Spoken with That, which, being every where, 
Lets none who speaks with Him seem all alone, 
Surely the man had died of solitude." 

But out of weakness came forth strength at last ; out 
of doubt, certainty ; out of humiliation, victory. An- 
other vision, in which he was commanded to preach 
publicly, followed ; and' now he called the Koreishites 
of the line of Hachim together, those who had most to 
lose and least to gain by his reform, and boldly an- 
nounced his mission. They tried persuasion, entreaties, 
bribes, and threats. " Should they array against me 
the sun on my right hand, and the moon on my left," 
said Mohammed, " yet w T hile God should command me, 
I would not renounce my purpose." These are not the 
words, nor this the course, of an impostor. 

Ten more years passed away ; his doctrine fought its 
way amid the greatest discouragements and dangers 
by purely moral means, by its own inherent strength. 
Kadijah was dead; Abu Taleb, his uncle and protector, 
died also. Most of Mohammed's disciples had taken 
refuge in Abyssinia, and at last Mohammed himself was 
driven to fly for his life with one companion, his early 
convert, Abu Bakr. For three days he lay concealed in 
a cavern, a league from Mecca. The Koreishite pur- 



THE HEGIRA. 105 

suera scoured the country, thirsting for his blood. They 
approached the cavern. "We are only two," said his 
trembling companion. " There is a third," said Moham- 
med ; " it is God himself." The Koreishites reached 
the cave ; a spider, we are told, had woven its w T eb across 
the mouth, and a pigeon was sitting on its nest in seem- 
ingly undisturbed repose. The Koreishites retreated, 
for it was evident the solitude of the place was unvio- 
lated ; and, by a sound instinct, one of the sublimest 

stories in all historv has been made the era of Moham- 

*/ 

medan Chronology. 

It is unnecessary to follow connectedly and in detail 

any other incidents in Mohammed's life. The above 

may be found, with some variety in the details, in any 

History of Mohammed,* but I have thought it essential 

to dwell upon them, however familiar they may be to 

some of us, as they seem to me, apart from their own 

intrinsic beauty, to supply the key to almost every thing 

else in Mohammed's career. 

The question of the sincerity of Mohammed has been 
- 
much debated ; but to me, I must confess, that to question 

his sincerity at starting, and to admit the above indis- 
putable facts, is very like a contradiction in terms. Nor 
could any one have done what Mohammed did without 

* See especially Washington Irving, p. 32, 33 ; and Mnir, vol. ii. 

E 2 



106 MOHAMMED AND MOHAMMEDANISM. 

the most profound faith in the reality and goodness of 
his cause. Fairly considered, there is no single trait in 
his character up to the time of the Hegira which calum- 
ny itself could couple with imposture : on the contrary, 
there is every thing to prove the real enthusiast arriving 
slowly and painfully at what he believed to be the truth. 
It has been remarked by Gibbon that no incipient 
prophet ever passed through so severe an ordeal as Mo- 
hammed, since he first presented himself as a prophet to 
those who w T ere most conversant with his infirmities as a 
man. Those who knew him best — his wife, his eccen- 
tric slave, his cousin, his earliest friend, he who, as Mo- 
hammed said, alone of his converts, " turned not back, 
neither was perplexed " — were the first to recognize his 
mission. The ordinary lot of a prophet was in his case 
reversed; he was not without honor save among those 
who did not know T him well. Strange that Voltaire, who 
himself wrote on Mohammed, and even made him the 
subject of a drama, should, with Mohammed's example 
before him, have ventured on his immoral paradox that 
" No man is a hero to his valet." Explained in one 
sense, that a small mind can not fully understand or ap- 
preciate a great one, it is a feeble truism ; explained in 
another, which was the sense Voltaire meant, that the 
hero is only a hero to those who see him at a distance, 
and that there is no such thing as true greatness, it is an 



SINCERITY OF MOHAMMED. 107 

audacious falsehood. It is almost equally strange that 
Gibbon, who has done such full justice to Mohammed in 
the general result, should say at starting, " Mohammed's 
religion consists of an eternal truth and a necessary fic- 
tion—There is one God, and Mohammed is his Prophet." 
It was, as I have endeavored to show, no fiction to Mo- 
hammed himself or to his followers; had it been so, 
Mohammedanism could never have risen as it did, nor 
be what it is now. 

But before we go on to consider those points in Mo- 
hammed's career which are really open to question, it 
may be well to recall a few prominent characteristics of 
the man who has stamped his impress so deeply on the 
Oriental world. Minute accounts of his appearance and 
of his daily life have been preserved to us ; they may be 
found in most of the biographies, and Sir William Mnir 
in particular has given us copious extracts from the 
writings of the secretary of Wakidy.* 

Mohammed was of middle height and of a strongly 
built frame ; his head was large, and across his ample 
forehead, and above finely arching eyebrows, ran a strong- 
ly marked vein, which, when he was angry, w T ould turn 
black and throb visibly. His eyes were coal-black, and 
piercing in their brightness ; his hair curled slightly ; 

* Muir, vol. iv., Supplement to Chap. XXXVII. ; cf. also Deutsche 
" Islam," p. 302-304. 



108 MOHAMMED AND MOHAMMEDANISM, 

and a long beard, which, like other Orientals, he would 
stroke when in deep thought, added to the general im- 
pressiveness of his appearance. His step was quick and 
firm, " like that of one descending a hill." Between his 
shoulders was the famous mark, the size of a pigeon's 
egg, which his disciples persisted in believing to be the 
sign of his prophetic office ; while the light which kin- 
dled in his eye, like that which flashed from the precious 
stones in the breastplate of the High-Priest, they called 
the light of prophecy. 

In his intercourse with others, he would sit silent 
among his companions for a long time together; but 
truly his silence was more eloquent than other men's 
speech, for the moment speech was called for, it was 
forthcoming in the shape of some weighty apothegm 
or proverb, such as the Arabs love to hear. When he 
laughed, he laughed heartily, shaking his sides and show- 
ing his teeth, which " looked as if they were hailstones." 
He was easy of approach to all who wished to see him, 
even as " the river-bank to him that draweth water there^ 
from." He was fond of animals, and they, as is often 
the case, w T ere fond of him. He seldom passed a group 
of children playing together without a few kind words 
to them ; and he was never the first to withdraw his 
hand from the grasp of one who offered him his. If the 
warmth of his attachment may be measured, as in fact 



CHARACTERISTICS OF THE PROPHET. 109 

it may, by the depth of his friends' devotion to him, no 
truer friend than Mohammed ever lived. Around him, 
in quite early days, gathered what was best and noblest 
in Mecca ; and in no single instance, through all the 
vicissitudes of his checkered life, was the friendship 
then formed ever broken. He wept like a child over 
the death of his faithful servant Zeid. He visited his 
mother's tomb some fifty years after her death, and he 
wept there because he believed that God had forbidden 
him to pray for her. He was naturally shy and retiring : 
" as bashful," said Ayesha, " as a veiled virgin." He 
was kind and forgiving to all. " I served him from the 
time I was eight years old," said his servant Anas, " and 
he never scolded me for any thing, though I spoiled 
much." The most noteworthy of his external character- 
istics was a sweet gravity and a quiet dignity, which 
drew involuntary respect, and which was the best, and 
often the only protection he enjoyed from insult. 

His ordinary dress was plain, even to coarseness ; yet 
he was fastidious in arranging it to the best advantage. 
He was fond of ablutions, and fonder still of perfumes ; 
and he prided himself on the neatness of his hair and 
the pearly whiteness of his teeth. His life was simple 
in all its details. He lived with his wives in a row of 
humble cottages, separated from one another by palm 
branches, cemented together with mud. He would kin- 



HO MOHAMMED AND MOHAMMEDANISM, 

die the fire, sweep the floor, and milk the goats himself. 
Ayesha tells us that he slept upon a leathern mat, and 
that he mended his clothes, and even clouted his shoes, 
with his own hand. For months together, Ayesha is 
also our authority for saying that he did not get a suffi- 
cient meal. The little food that he had was always 
shared with those who dropped in to partake of it. In- 
deed, outside the Prophet's house was a bench or gallery, 
on which were always to be found a number of the poor 
who lived entirely on the Prophet's generosity, and were 
hence called the "people of the bench." His ordinary 
food was dates and water, or barley bread ; milk and 
honey were luxuries of which he was fond, but which he 
rarely allowed himself. The fare of the desert seemed 
most congenial to him, even when he was sovereign of 
Arabia. One day some people passed by him with a 
basket of berries from one of the desert shrubs. " Pick 
me out," he said to his companion, " the blackest of those 
berries, for they are sweet — even such as I was wont to 
gather when I fed the flocks of Mecca at Adgad." 

Such were some of the characteristics of the man 
whom the Arabs were now called upon to recognize as 
the prophet of their country, and as a messenger direct 
from God. 

Monotheism, pure and simple, if it is to be a life as 
well as a creed, almost postulates the prophetic office. 



PROPHETIC OFFICE AMONG SEMITIC RACES. \\\ 

The Creator is at too great a distance from his creatures 
to allow of a sufficiently direct communication with them. 
The power, the knowledge, the infinity of God overshad- 
ow his providence, his sympathy, and his love. Eenan 
has remarked that in only two ways can such a gap be 
bridged over : first, if, as in the Indian Avatar, from 
time to time, or, as in Christianity, once for all, there is 
an actual manifestation of the Godhead upon earth ; or, 
secondly, if, as in Judaism or in Buddhism, the Deity 
chooses a favored mortal, w T ho may give to his brother 
men a fuller knowledge of the divine mind and will.* 
The latter would seem the form most congenial to the 
Semitic mind, if one may be allowed to use that con- 
venient but, since the bold generalizations in which Re- 
nan has indulged respecting them, somewhat mislead- 
ing word. The Arabs themselves looked up to Adam, 
Noah, Abraham, and Moses as prophets ; Mohammed did 
the same, and added Christ to their number. He held 
that each successive revelation had been higher than the 
preceding one, though each was complete in itself, as 
being adequate to the circumstances of the time. Was 
there, Mohammed might ask, any reason to suppose that 
Christ had been the last of the prophets, and that his 
revelation was absolutely as well as relatively final ; and 

* Renan, p. 278. 



112 MOHAMMED AND MOHAMMEDANISM. 

were there not evils enough in Arabia and in the world 
to call for a further communication from heaven ? To 
say that Arabia needed renovation was to say in other 
words that the time for a new prophet had come, and 
why might not that prophet be Mohammed himself? 
Sprenger, the most recent and exhaustive writer on the 
subject, has shown that for some hundred years before 
Mohammed the advent of another prophet had been ex- 
pected and even predicted. So strong was the general 
conviction on the subject that the Arab tribes were 
guided by it even in their politics.* 

But, if we admit the sincerity of Mohammed and the 
naturalness of his belief up to the time of the Hegira, 
what are we to say of him during his first years of ex- 
ile at Medina, and again of his subsequent successes ? 

It is unquestionably true that a change does seem -to 
come over him. The revelations of the Koran are more 
and more suited to the particular circumstances and ca- 
prices of the moment. They are often of the nature of 
political bulletins or of personal apologies, rather than 
of messages direct from God. Now appears for the 
first time the convenient but dangerous doctrine of ab- 



* Sprenger, vol. i., p. 245, quotes a saying of the Arabs that the children 
of Shem are prophets, of Japhet kings, of Ham slaves. We are told that 
the Arab women were at this time in the habit of praying for male chil- 
dren, in the hope that of them the long-expected prophet might be born. 



APPARENT CHANGE IN MOHAMMED. \\^ 

rogation, by which a subsequent revelation might super- 
sede a previous one.* 

The limitation to the unbounded license of Oriental 
polygamy which he had himself imposed, he relaxes in 
his own behalf :f the greatest stain, and an indelible 
one, on his memory, though it is possible that he may 
have justified himself to his own mind by the Ethiopian 
marriage not condemned in the case of Moses.:}; The 
public opinion even of the harem was scandalized by 
his marriage with Mary, an Egyptian, a Christian, aud a 
slave. His marriage with Zeinab, the wife of Zeid, his 
freedman and adopted son, divorced as she was by Zeid 
for the express purpose that Mohammed might marry 
her, was still worse. It was felt as an outrage even 
upon the lax morality of an Oriental nation, till all rec- 
lamations were hushed into silence by a Sura of the 
Koran which rebuked Mohammed, not for his laxity, 
but for his undue abstinence !§ 



* Sura xvi., 103; ii., 100. 

t Sura xxxiii. , 49 ; lxvi., 1. 

X See Lecture IV., p. 210. 

§ Sura xxxiii., 37. See a good passage on the subject in the British 
Quarterly Review for January, 1872, p. 131. 

It should be remembered, however, that most of Mohammed's mar- 
riages are to be explained at least as much by his pity for the forlorn 
condition of the persons concerned as by other motives. They were al- 
most all of them with widows who were not remarkable either for their 
beauty or their wealth, but quite the reverse. May not this fact, and 



114 MOHAMMED AND MOHAMMEDANISM. 

The doctrine of toleration gradually becomes one of 
extermination ; persecuted no longer, he becomes a per- 
secutor himself ; with the Koran in one hand, the scimi- 
ter in the other, he goes forth to offer to the nations the 
threefold alternative of conversion, tribute, death. He 
is once or twice untrue to the kind and forgiving dispo- 
sition of his best nature ; and is once or twice unrelent- 
ing in the punishment of his personal enemies, especial- 
ly of the Jews, who had disappointed his expectation 
that they would join him, and of such as had stung him 
by their lampoons or libels. He is even guilty more 
than once of conniving at the assassination of inveter- 
ate opponents; and the massacre of the Bani Koreit- 
za, though they had deserted him almost on the field of 
battle, and their lives were forfeit by all the laws of 
war, moved the misgivings of others than the disaffect- 
ed. He might, no doubt, believing, as he did, in his 
own inspiration, have found an ample precedent for the 
act in the slaughter of the Canaanites by Joshua two 
thousand years before, or even in the wars of Saul and 
David with neighboring tribes ; but, judged by any but 
an Oriental standard of morality, and by his ow T n con- 



his undoubted faithfulness to Kadijah till her dying day, and till he him- 
self was fifty years of age, give us some ground to hope that calumny 
has been at work in the story of Zeinab ? There are some indications 
on the face of it that this is the case. 



HOW THE CHANGE IN MOHAMMED IS EXPLAINED. H5 

spicuous magnanimity on other occasions, his act, in all 
its accessories, was one of cold-blooded and inhuman 
atrocity. 

Can we explain away or extenuate these blots on his 
memory, or, if we can not, are they inconsistent with 
substantial sincerity and single-mindedness ? Here is 
a problem of surpassing interest to the psychologist, 
and I have only time to touch lightly upon it. 

In the first place, the change in his character and 
aims is not to be separated from the general conditions 
of his life. At first he was a religious and moral re- 
former only, and could not, even if he would, have met 
the evils of his time by any other than by moral means. 
If he was without the advantages, he was also free from 
the dangers, of success. A religion militant is, as all 
ecclesiastical history shows, very different from a relig- 
ion triumphant. The Prophet in spite of himself be- 
came, by the force of circumstances, more than a proph- 
et. Not, indeed, that w r ith him height ever begot high 
thoughts. He preserved to the end of his career that 
modesty and simplicity of life which is the crowning 
beauty of his character ; but he became a temporal 
ruler, and, where the Koran did not make its way 
unaided, the civil magistrate naturally used temporal 
means. Under such circumstances, and when his fol- 
lowers pressed upon him their belief in the nature of 



116 MOHAMMED AND MOHAMMEDANISM. 

his mission, who can draw the line where enthusiasm 
ends and self-deception or even imposture begins ? No 
one who knows human nature will deny that the two 
are often perfectly consistent with each other. Once 
persuaded fully of his divine mission as a whole, a man 
unconsciously begins to invest his personal fancies and 
desires with a like sanction : it is not that he tampers 
with his conscience ; he rather subjects conscience and 
reason, appetite and affection, to the one dominating 
influence ; and so, as time goes on, with perfect good 
faith gets to confound what comes from below with 
what comes from above. What is the meaning of the 
term " pious frauds," except that such acts are frauds in 
the eyes of others, acts of piety in the eyes of the doer ? 
The more fully convinced a man is of the goodness of 
his cause, the more likely is he to forget the means in 
the end ; he need not consciously assert that the end 
justifies the means, but his eyes are so fixed upon the 
end that they overlook the interval between the idea 
and its realization. He has to maintain a hold over the 
motley mass of followers that his mission has gathered 
around him. Must he not become all things to all to 
meet their several wants? Perhaps he does become so, 
and, in the process, what he gains in the bulk of his in- 
fluence he loses in its quality. Its intensity is in inverse 
proportion to its extension. No man — I quote. here, 



MORAL VALUE OF CONSISTENCY. \\>f 

with only such slight alteration as adapts them to my 
subject, the noble words of George Eliot : " No man, 
whether prophet, statesman, or popular preacher, ever 
yet kept a prolonged hold over a mixed multitude with- 
out being in some measure degraded thereby. His 
teaching or his life must be accommodated to the aver- 
age wants of his hearers, and not to his own finest in- 
sight. But, after all, we should regard the life of every 
great man as a drama, in which there must be impor- 
tant inward modifications accompanying the outward 
changes."* Rigid consistency in itself is no great merit 
— rather the reverse : what one has a right to demand 
in a great man is that the intensity of the central truth 
he has to deliver should become, not less, but more in- 
tense; that that flame shall burn so clear as to throw 
into the shade other objects which shine with a less 
brilliant light ; that the essence shall be pure even if 
some of the surroundings be alloyed ; and this, I think, 
if not more than this, with all his faults, we may affirm 
of Mohammed. 

On the whole the wonder is to me not how much, but 
how little, under different circumstances, Mohammed 
differed from himself. In the shepherd of the desert, 
in the Syrian trader, in the solitary of Mount Hira, in 

* "Romola," ch. xxv., p. 214 — American edition. 



118 MOHAMMED AND MOHAMMEDANISM. 

the reformer in the minority of one, in the exile of Me- 
dina, in the acknowledged conqueror, in the equal of 
the Persian Chosroes and the Greek Heraclius, we can 
still trace a substantial unity. I doubt whether any 
other man, whose external conditions changed so much, 
ever himself changed less to meet them : the accidents 
are changed, the essence seems to me to be the same 
in all. 

Power, as the saying is, no doubt put the man to the 
test. It brought new temptations and therefore new 
failures, from which the shepherd of the desert might 
have remained free. But happy is the man who, living 

" In the fierce light that beats upon a throne, 
And blackens every blot," 

can stand the test as well as did Mohammed. A Chris- 
tian poet has well asked — 

"What keeps a spirit wholly true 
To that ideal which he bears? 
What record? not the sinless years 
That breathed beneath the Syrian blue." 

But it is a current misconception, and, subject to the 
above explanation, a very great one, that a gradual but 
continuous and accelerating moral declension is to be 
traced from the time w T hen the fugitive unexpectedly 
entered Medina in triumph. " Truth is come — let false- 
hood disappear," he said, when, after his long exile, and 



NO CONTINUOUS DECLENSION. \\Q 

after the temptations of Medina had done their worst 
for him, he re-entered the Kaaba, and its three hundred 
and sixty idols, the famous Hobal among them, vanish- 
ed before him ; and in his treatment of the unbeliev- 
ing city he was marvelously true to his programme. 
There was now nothing left in Mecca that could thwart 
his pleasure. If ever he had worn a mask at all, he 
would now at all events have thrown it off; if lower 
aims had gradually sapped the higher, or his modera- 
tion had been directed, as Gibbon supposes, by his self- 
ish interests, we should now have seen the effect ; now 
would have been the moment to gratify his ambition, 
to satiate his lust, to glut his revenge. Is there any 
thing of the kind ? Read the account of the entry of 
Mohammed into Mecca, side by side with that of Ma- 
rius or Sulla into Rome. Compare all the attendant 
circumstances, the outrages that preceded, and the use 
made by each of his recovered power, and we shall 
then be in a position better to appreciate the magna- 
nimity and moderation of the Prophet of Arabia. There 
were no proscription lists, no plunder, no wanton re- 
venge. 

The chief blots in his fame are not. after his undisput- 
ed victory, but during his years of checkered warfare at 
Medina, and, such as they are, are distributed very even- 
ly over the whole of that time. In other words, he did 



120 MOHAMMED AND MOHAMMEDANISM. 

very occasionally give way to a strong temptation ; but 
there was no gradual sapping of moral principles and 
no deadening of conscience — a very important distinc- 
tion. One or two acts of summary and uncompromising 
punishment ; possibly one or two acts of cunning, and, 
after Kadijah was dead, the violation of one law which 
he had from veneration for her imposed on others, and 
had always hitherto kept himself, form no very long bill 
of indictment against one who always admitted he was 
a man of like passions with ourselves, who was ignorant 
of the Christian moral law, and who attained to power 
after difficulties and dangers and misconceptions which 
might have turned the best of men into a suspicious 
and sanguinary tyrant* 

It is no doubt true that some of the revelations of the 
Koran, particularly the later ones, bear the appearance 
of having been given consciously for personal and tem- 
porary purposes, and these have led, with some show of 
reason, even such impartial writers as Sir William Muir 
to accuse Mohammed of " the high blasphemy of forg- 
ing the name of God." But it would be strange indeed 



* Yet Sprenger (vol.i., p. 359), on no more grounds than those here men- 
tioned, can say of Mohammed that when he attained to power in Medina, 
"er wurde zum wolliistigen Theokraten und blutdiirstig Tyrannen, Pabst 
nnd Konig." What Christian Pope or King — to say nothing of Oriental 
rulers, with whom alone is it fair to compare him — had as great tempta- 
tions and succumbed to them as little as did Mohammed ? 



DID MOHAMMED FORGE THE NAME OF GOD? 121 

if, viewed in the light of what I have said above as to 
Mohammed's unfaltering belief in his own inspiration, 
lie had not occasionally, or even often, revealed in the 
Koran the mental processes by which he justified to him- 
self acts about w T hich he may have himself, at first, felt 
scruples, or which his contemporaries may have called 
in question. And it seems pertinent to ask, by way of 
rebutting the charge, whether he was not at least equally 
ready, when occasion required, to blame himself for 
what he had said or done, and to call the whole Mussul- 
man world to be witnesses of his self-condemnation? 
And, again, if he was ever, in the matter of the Koran, 
a conscious impostor, why was he not so much of tener ? 
If he had once knowingly tripped, and gained thereby, 
the path must have been too slippery and the descent must 
have seemed too easy and inviting for him to recall his 
footsteps. But what are the facts ? Take two samples. 
On one occasion, in a moment of despondency, he 
made a partial concession to idolatry. He thought to 
win over the recalcitrant Koreishites to his views by al- 
lowing that their gods might make intercession with the 
supreme God. 

"What think ye of Al-Lat, and Al-Uzza, and Manah, the third besides? 
They are the exalted Females, and their intercession with God may be 
hoped for." 

The Koreishites, overjoyed, signified their adhesion to 

F 



122 MOHAMMED AND MOHAMMEDANISM. 

Mohammed, and it seemed that they would bring over 
all Mecca with them. His friends would have passed 
the matter over as quietly as possible. So great was the 
scandal among the Faithful that some of his earliest 
historians omit it altogether. But the Prophet's con- 
science was too tender for that. In an hour of weakness 
Mohammed had mistaken expediency for duty, and hav- 
ing discovered his mistake, he would recall the conces- 
sion, at all hazards, as publicly as he had made it, even 
at the risk of the imputation of weakness and of impos- 
ture. The amended version of the Sura ran thus : 

"What think ye of Al-Lat, and Al-Uzza, and Manah, the third besides? 
They are naught but empty names which ye and your fathers have in- 
vented."* 

I will give one more instance. It is a memorable 
one. Mohammed was engaged in earnest conversation 
with Wallid, a powerful Koreishite, whose conversion he 
much desired. A blind man in very humble circum- 
stances, Abdallah by name, happened to come up, and, 
not knowing that Mohammed was otherwise engaged, 
exclaimed, " Oh, Apostle of God, teach me some part of 
what God has taught thee." Mohammed, vexed at the 
interruption, frowned and turned away from him. But 

* Sura liii. ; cf. also xvii., 75, and xxii., 51 ; see Muir, vol. ii., p. 149- 
158, and Sprenger, vol. ii., p. 17, where there is a curious dissertation 
on the word Gharanyk, used for Females — "swans which mount higher 
and higher toward God. " 



SURA CONDEMNING MOHAMMED. 123 

his conscience soon smote him for having postponed the 
poor and humble to the rich and powerful, aijd the next 
day's Sura showed that this "forger of God's name" 
was at least as ready to forge it for his own condemna- 
tion as in his defense. The Sura is known by the sig- 
nificant title " He frowned," and runs thus : 

"The Prophet frowned, and turned aside, 

Because the blind man came unto him. 
And how knowest thou whether he might not have been cleansed from 

his sins, 
Or whether he might have been admonished, and profited thereby? 

As for the man that is rich, 

Him thou receivest graciously; 
And thou carest not that he is not cleansed. 

But as for him that cometh unto thee earnestly seeking his salvation, 
And trembling anxiously, him dost thou neglect. 

By no means shouldst thou act thus." 

And ever after this we are told that, w T hen the Prophet 
saw the poor blind man, he went out of his way to do 
him honor, saying, " The man is thrice welcome on whose 
account my Lord hath reprimanded me," and he made 
him twice Governor of Medina.* 

Mohammed never wavered in his belief in his own 

* Sura lxxx., with Sale's note ad loc. ; and Muir, vol. ii., p. 128. Sir 
Wm. Muir tells the story much as I have related it, but seems quite un- 
able to see its grandeur, for he only remarks upon it : " This incident illus- 
trates at once the anxiety of Mohammed to gain over the principal men 
of the Koreish, and, when he was rejected, the readiness with which he 
turned to the poor and uninfluential." Was ever moral sublimity so 
marred, or heroism so vulgarized ? How Mohammed towers above even 
his best historians! 



124 MOHAMMED AND MOHAMMEDANISM. 

mission, nor, what is more extraordinary, in his belief as 
to its precise nature and well-defined limits. He was a 
prophet charged with a mission from God ; nothing less, 
but nothing more. He might make mistakes, lose bat- 
tles, do wrong acts, but none the less did he believe that 
the words he spoke were the very words of God. To 
every Sura of the Koran he prefixed the words, " In the 
name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful," even as 
the Hebrew prophet would open his message with his 
" Thus saith the Lord ;" and before every sentence and 
every word of the Sacred Book is to be read, between 
the lines, the word " say," indicating that Mohammed 
believed, what Moses and Isaiah only believed on special 
occasions, that in his utterances he was the mere mouth- 
piece, and therefore the unerring mouthpiece, of the In- 
finite and the Eternal. He might win his way against 
superhuman difficulties, preserve a charmed life, do deeds 
which seemed miracles to others, gain the homage of all 
Arabia, and present in his own person an ideal of moral- 
ity never before pictured by an Arab ; and yet he never 
forgot himself, or claimed to be more than a weak and 
fallible mortal. 

As his view of his own mission is an all-important 
point in estimating his character, let us deal, in conclud- 
ing this Lecture, with facts alone, and watch his conduct 
at a few critical epochs which I have purposely selected, 



A PROPHECY FULFILLED. 125 

as throwing light upon the matter, in its different as- 
pects, away from their chronological order and from 
very different periods of his life. 

When the Persian monarch Chosroes was contemplat- 
ing w T ith pride, like Nebuchadnezzar of old, the great 
Artemita that he had built and all its fabulous treasures, 
he received a letter from an obscure citizen of Mecca, 
bidding him acknowledge Mohammed as the Prophet 
of God. Chosroes tore the letter into pieces. "It is 
thus," exclaimed the Arabian Prophet when he heard 
of it, " that God will tear his kingdom and reject his 
supplications." No prediction could have seemed at the 
time less likely to be accomplished, since Persia was at 
its height, and Constantinople at its lowest. But Mo- 
hammed lived to see its fulfillment, and yet never claim- 
ed in consequence, as others might have done, the power 
of prophecy. 

While he had as yet only half established his position, 
a powerful Christian tribe tendered their submission, if 
only he would leave their chief some remnant of his 
power. "Not one unripe date," replied Mohammed.* 
We remember how the French rhetorician the other 
day, knowing that his nation, if they are slaves to noth- 
ing else, are always slaves to an epigram, prolonged re- 

* Muir, vol. iv. , p. 59. 



126 MOHAMMED AND MOHAMMEDANISM. 

sistance to the bitter end by his famous declaration that 
not " an inch of their territory nor a stone of their for- 
tresses" would the French surrender. And we may 
imagine the effect produced upon the handful of Mo- 
hammed's Meccan followers who were still in exile at 
Medina by such an answer, coming from one who was 
certainly no vapid rhetorician, who preferred silence to 
speech, and who never said a thing he did not really 
mean. 

Moseilama, the most formidable of the rival prophets 
whom Mohammed's success stirred up, thinking that 
Mohammed's game was a merely selfish one, and that 
two might play at it, sent to Mohammed to offer to go 
shares with him in the good things of the world, which 
united they might easily divide. The letter was of 
Spartan brevity : " Moseilama the apostle of God to Mo- 
hammed the apostle of God. — Now let the earth be half 
mine and half thine." Mohammed's reply was hardly 
less laconic : " Mohammed the apostle of God to Mosei- 
lama the liar. — The earth is God's ; he giveth it to such 
of his servants as he pleaseth, and they who fear him 
shall prosper." 

Again mark his conduct under failure or rebuff. He 
had lost, within three days of each other, Abu Taleb,his 
one protector, and his venerable wife Kadi j ah — that tooth- 
less old woman, as Ayesha long afterward, in the bloom 



PERSECUTION AND DEFEAT, 127 

of her beauty, called her ; the wife who, as Mohammed 
indignantly replied, " when he was poor, had enriched 
him ; when he was called a liar, had alone believed in 
him ; when he was opposed by all the world, had alone 
remained true to him."* What was he to do ? Silence 
and the desert seemed the one chance of safety, but what 
did he do ? Followed only by Zeid, his faithful f reed- 
man, he went to Tayif , the town after Mecca most wholly 
given to idolatry ; and, like Elijah in Samaria, he boldly 
challenged the protection and obedience of the inhabit- 
ants. They stoned him out of the city. He returned 
to Mecca defeated, but not disheartened; cast dow r n, but 
not destroyed ; quietly saying to himself, " If thou, O 
Lord, art not angry, I am safe; I seek refuge in the 
light of thy countenance alone." f 

After the tide had turned in his favor, and the battle 
of Bedr had, as it seemed, put the seal to his military 
success, he was signally defeated and wounded almost 

* Sprenger characteristically remarks (vol. i., p. 151) that Mohammed's 
faithfulness to Kadijah to her dying day was due probably not to his in- 
clination, but to his dependence on her. Why, then, the interval before 
Mohammed married again ? And why, long afterward, his noble burst 
of gratitude to her memory when Ayesha contrasted her own youth and 
beauty with Kadijah's age and infirmities, and asked, "Am not I much 
better than she ?" " No, by Allah," replied Mohammed— " No, by Allah ; 
when I was poor she enriched me," etc. Was Mohammed dependent 
upon the dead ? For cynical remarks of a similar kind, see, among many 
other instances, Sprenger, vol. h\, p. 19, 23, 86. 

t See the story in full in Muir, vol. ii., p. 198-203. 



128 MOHAMMED AND MOHAMMEDANISM. 

to the death at Mount Ohud. People began to desert 
him ; but a Sura, Mohammed's " order of the day," ap- 
peared : " Mohammed is no more than a prophet. What 
if he had been killed, needs ye go back % He that turn- 
eth back injureth not God in the least, but himself."* 
The spell of his untaught eloquence recalled them to 
themselves, and we are assured that his defeat at Ohud 
advanced his cause as much as did his victory at Bedr. 

Ayesha, his favorite wife, one day asked of him, " Oh, 
Prophet of God, do none enter Paradise but through 
God's mercy ?" " None, none, none," replied he. " But 
will not even you enter by your own merits ?" Moham- 
med put his hand upon his head and thrice replied, 
"Neither shall I enter Paradise unless God cover me 
w T ith his mercy." There was no " false certitude of the 
divine intentions," the besetting temptation of spiritual 
ambition ; no facile dogmatizing upon what he had only 
to hint to be believed — his own pre-eminent position in 
the unseen world. It would have been safe to do so : 
£C cicpavlg rbv juvSov avsvuKctg ovk t\u i\zy\ov ; f and 
how few could have resisted a like temptation ! 

And at the last grand scene of all, when the Prophet 
had met his death, as he had always told his doubting 
followers he must, and Omar, the Simon Peter of Islam, 

* Sura in., 138. 
t Hdt., ii., 23. 



DEATH OF THE PROPHET. 129 

in the agony of his grief, drew his scimiter and, wildly 
rushing in among the weeping Mussulmans, swore that 
he would strike off the head of any one who dared 
to say that the Prophet was dead — the Prophet could 
not be dead — it was by a gentle reminder of what the 
Prophet himself had always taught that the venerable 
Abu Bakr, the earliest of the Prophet's friends, and 
his successor in the Kaliphate, calmed his excitement : 
" Is it then Mohammed, or the God of Mohammed, 
that we have learned to worship 2" 

F2 



LECTURE III 



February 28, 1874. 



MOHAMMEDANISM. 

" Allahu Akbar " — God is great ; there is no god but God, and Mo- 
hammed is his prophet. 

In the concluding part of my last Lecture I discussed 
at length the question of the character of Mohammed, 
and we arrived, I think, at the conclusion that, on the 
one hand, he had grave moral faults, which may be ac- 
counted for, but not excused, by the circumstances of 
time, by the exigencies of his situation, and by the weak- 
nesses of human nature. And on the other we saw rea- 
son to believe that he was not only passionately impress- 
ed with the reality of his divine mission in early life, 
but that the common view of a great moral declension 
to be traced in his latter years is not borne out by 
the evidence; and that to the end of his career, amid 
failures and successes, in life and in preparation for 
death, he was true to the one principle with which he 
started. He became indeed, by the force of circum- 



ESSENCE OF MOHAMMEDANISM. \%\ 

stances, general and ruler, lawgiver and judge, of all Ara- 
bia ; but above all and before all, he was still a sim- 
ple prophet delivering God's message in singleness of 
heart, obeying, as far as he could, God's will, but never 
claiming to be more than God's weak and erring servant. 

And now, perhaps, it is time to ask what was the es- 
sence of Mohammed's belief, that which made him what 
he was, which has given his religion its inexhaustible vi- 
tality? How did it resemble, and how did it differ 
from, the religions which it overthrew, and one of which 
at least we are accustomed to look upon, and shall, in its 
pure form as it came from Christ's own lips, and can 
still be read in Christ's own acts, and even to some ex- 
tent in the character of his servants, always continue 
to look upon, as immeasurably superior to Mohamme- 
danism ? 

The essence of Mohammedanism is not merely the sub- 
lime belief in the unity of God, though it is difficult for 
us to realize the tumult of the feelings and the intensity 
of the life which must be awakened in a Polytheistic peo- 
ple, who are also imaginative and energetic, when, on a 
sudden, they recognize the One in and behind the Many. 
Mohammed started indeed with the dogmatic assertion 
that there was but one God, the Creator of all things in 
heaven and earth, all powerful, knowing all things, every 
where present. He reiterates this in a thousand shapes 



132 MOHAMMED AND MOHAMMEDANISM. 

as the forefront of his message ;* and, sublimely confi- 
dent that it need only be stated to insure ultimate ac- 
ceptance, he deigns not to offer proof of that which, in 
his judgment, must prove itself. 

But it was more than the unity of God, and the attri- 
butes which flow from that conception, which Moham- 
med asserted. A theoretic assent to this might have had 
but little influence on practice. What is by its nature 
immeasurably above man may also be immeasurably re- 
moved from him ; and accordingly Mohammed reasserted 
that w 7 hich had been the life of the old Hebrew nation, 
and the burden of the song of every Hebrew prophet — 
that God not only lives, but that he is a righteous and a 
merciful ruler ; and that to his will it is the duty and the 
privilege of all living men to bow.f Nor was the sub- 
limity of this doctrine marred in its application by the 
old Hebrew exclusiveness. The Arabian nation was first 



* See especially Saras i. and cxii., the beginning and end of the Koran 
in the orthodox arrangement ; also Sura xxxv., 41-44. Cf. also Sura ii., 
19-20, 109 ; vi., 1-6 ; xiii., 10, 11 ; xvi., 12-17 ; liii. and xcvi. 

t See this well drawn out in Maurice's "Religions of the World, "p. 21- 
24. The passage is a most suggestive one. I owe much to it; and.it seems 
to me that here, and in many other passages of his writings, Mr. Maurice 
did far more, and penetrated far deeper, than is allowed in a very brilliant 
passage of a recent work (see " Literature and Dogma/'' p. 345). When 
the unacknowledged debts of the nineteenth century to its great writers 
come to be added up, I am convinced that it will be fully recognized that 
the mental powers of Mr. Maurice rank as high as did the purity and no- 
bility of his life ; and more can hardly be said. 



WHAT MOHAMMEDANISM SWEPT AWAY. 133 

called indeed ; but as in Christianity, and as it was not 
in Judaism, the obligations of the Arabs were to be 
measured by their privileges, and the call was to be ex- 
tended through them to the world at large. The Jew 
surrendered his birthright if he imparted his faith to 
other peoples. The Arab surrendered his if he did not 
spread his faith wherever and however he could. 

But Mohammed's assertion of the unity of God, and 
of his rule over every detail of man's life, was no mere 
plagiarism from an older faith. The Jewish people at 
large had, even in their best days, rushed wildly after the 
worship of alien gods ; at last, indeed, the iron of the Cap- 
tivity had entered into their souls ; they learned much dur- 
ing their sojourn in the East, but they unlearned more 
— they unlearned there, once and forever, the sin of idol- 
atry. But though they never henceforward worshiped 
other gods, the higher teaching of their prophets they 
still too much ignored, and the period which might have 
been the culmination of their glory ended in that tragedy 
of tragedies which was the immediate precursor of their 
fall. The sceptre departed from Judah, but the Jewish 
exiles in Arabia still clung desperately to the phantom 
of those proud religious privileges when all which had 
given some claim to them had disappeared. Christians 
too — such Christians as Mohammed had ever met — had 
forgotten at once the faith of the Jews, and that high- 



134 MOHAMMED AND MOHAMMEDANISM. 

er revelation of God given to them by Christ which the 
Jews rejected. Homoousians and Homoiousians, Mon- 
othelites and Monophysites, Jacobites and Eutychians, 
making hard dogmas of things wherein the sacred writ- 
ers themselves had made no dogma, disputing fiercely 
whether what was mathematically false could be meta- 
physically true, and nicely discriminating the shades of 
truth and falsehood in the views suggested to bridge 
over the abysmal gulf between them ; turning figures 
into facts, rhetoric into logic, and poetry into prose, had 
forgotten the unity of God while they were disputing 
about it most loudly with their lips. They bnsied them- 
selves with every question about Christ except those which 
might have led them to imitate Christ's life. Now Mo- 
hammed came to make a clean sweep of such unrealities. 
Images : what are they ? " Bits of black wood, pretend- 
ing to be God ;"* philosophical theories, and theolog- 
ical cobwebs. Away with them all ! God is great, and 
there is nothing else great. This is the Mussulman creed. 
"Islam," that is, man must resign his will to God's, and 
find his highest happiness in so doing. This is the Mus- 
sulman life. And I would remark here, and would par- 
ticularly beg those who are doing me the honor to attend 
these Lectures to bear in mind, that though I have, in 

* Carlyle,-" Heroes," p. 226. 



MOHAMMEDANISM A MISNOMER.. 135 

compliance with European custom, often spoken of Mo- 
hammedanism and Mohammedans, the name was never 
used by Mohammed himself or by his earlier disciples, 
and, in spite of the reverence paid to their Prophet, it 
has always been rejected by his followers themselves as 
a rightful appellation. To quote once more the noble 
words of Abu Bakr, it was not Mohammed, but the God 
of Mohammed, that the Prophet taught his followers to 
worship. The creed is " Islam," a verbal noun, derived 
from a root meaning " submission to" and " faith in God," 
and the believers who so submit themselves are called 
Moslems, a participle of the same root, both being con- 
nected with the words "Salam," or "peace," and "Sa- 
lym," or " healthy."* There was nothing, therefore, the- 
oretically new in what I have described as the central 
truth of Islam, for it was this belief that lay at the root of 
the greatness of the Jewish nation, and their separation 
from all other nations. Certain forms of Christianity 
have asserted it as strongly as did Mohammed. This 
principle has been the strength of Calvinism and of Pu- 
ritanism ; and in this direction perhaps lies the explana- 
tion of the fact that those forms of religion which have 
been theoretically most fatalistic have by their acts given 
the strongest practical assertion of free-will. This was 

* Sprenger, vol. i., p. 69. 



136 MOHAMMED AND MOHAMMEDANISM. 

the spark from heaven which lit the train. In his asser- 
tion of this lay the religious genius of Mohammed. This 
gave the Arabs " unity as a nation, discipline and enthu- 
siasm as an army."* This sent them forth in their wild 
crusade against the world; and, armed with this, they 
swept away before them every creed, or memory of a 
creed, which did not then contain any principle so in- 
spiring. 

Such then were the two leading principles of the new 
creed : the existence of one God, whose will was to be 
the rule of life, and the mission of Mohammed to pro- 
claim what that will was. The one doctrine as old, if 
not older than the time when the father of the faithful 
left his Chaldean home in obedience to the divine will ; 
the other sanctioned, indeed, in its general assertion of 
the prophetic office, by the traditionary belief of both 
Jews and Arabs ; but startling enough in the time at 
which the revelation came, in the instrument selected, 
and in the way in which he proclaimed it. In this con- 
sists the real originality, such as it is, of Mohammedan- 
ism. The other articles of faith, added to the two I have 
already discussed — the written revelation of God's will, 
the responsibility of man, the existence of angels and of 
Jinn, the future life, the resurrection, and the final judg- 



* Maurice, loc. cit. 



PRACTICAL DUTIES OF ISLAM. J 37 

ment — are to be found, either developed or in germ, in 
the systems either of Jews or Zoroastrians or Christians. 
Even in the times of ignorance, the camel tethered to a 
dead man's grave was an indication that the grave was, 
even to the wild Arab, not the end of all things.* 

Nor was there any thing much more original in the 
four, practical duties of Islam — in prayer and almsgiving, 
in fasting and in pilgrimage.f Prayer is the aspiration 
of the human soul toward God, common to every relig- 
ion, from the rudest Fetichism to the most sublime Mono- 
theism. Almsgiving is the most easy and obvious meth- 
od of evidencing that love to man which leads up to and 
is, in its turn, the result of love to God. Fasting is an 
assertion, though a superficial one, of the great truth that 
self-denial is a step toward God ; but it is peculiarly li- 
able to abuse as fostering the belief, so common among 
the ruder of the Semitic nations, and still commoner 
among ascetics in modern times, that God is to be feared 
rather than loved, and that there is something pleasing 

* Sprenger says (vol. i., p. 4, 301)jthat the reason why Mohammed re- 
fers so often, e.g., in the very first Sura in chronological order, to the "clot 
of blood " from which man was created, is because he looked upon it much 
as Christians have done to the emerging of the butterfly from the chrysalis 
as a proof or illustration of the resurrection. In Sura liii. Mohammed says 
he took not the doctrine merely, but the illustration also, from the roll of 
Abraham. Cf. Sura lxxv. , entitled "The Resurrection," ad fin. : " Is not 
the God who formed man from a mere embryo powerful enough to quicken 
the dead ?" 

f Cf.Milman, "Latin Christianity," vol. i., p. 453. 



138 MOHAMMED AND MOHAMMEDANISM. 

to him in pain as such — pain, that is, apart from its ef- 
fect upon the will, and so upon the character. Pilgrim- 
age is a concession to human feelings, not to say to hu- 
man weakness, common again, in practice, to all the relig- 
ions of the world. But this last calls, perhaps, for some 
special remark here, since its actual influence has been 
so great, while in theory and in reality it is alien alike 
to Mohammedanism and to Christianity. 

" The hour cometh when ye shall neither in this mount- 
ain nor yet in Jerusalem worship the Father." " God is 
a spirit, and they that worship him must worship him 
in spirit and in truth." But from the time the words 
were spoken, even to this day, a continuous living stream 
has poured toward the Holy Land. For nineteen cent- 
uries Christian pilgrims have been seen to leave their 
homes and kindred, facing, now privations, now dangers, 
and now ridicule, that they might enjoy the sacred lux- 
ury, the ineffable religious rapture, of beholding the city 
over which the Saviour wept, of standing on the spot 
which gave him birth, of gazing on the lake whereon he 
taught, and of worshiping in the shrine which covers 
the rock wherein his body lay. And far be it from me to 
say — spite of the invention of the true cross, spite of St. 
Andrew's lance and the relics of the Apostles, spite of 
the Crusades themselves, spite of the keys of the Holy 
Sepulchre, and even of the imposture of the holy fire — 



WORSHIP OF THE KAABA. 139 

that the evils belonging to this reverence for places have 
altogether predominated over the good. A scientific and 
unimaginative age laughs at the weaknesses and the fol- 
lies involved, but it forgets the dauntless faith and heroic 
endurance, the sacrifice of self, and the romance of dan- 
ger ; it forgets that it is the office of religion to deal with 
these very human weaknesses and follies, and make the 
best of such materials as it has to work upon. 

Christ swept away some of the abuses of the Temple 
worship, and looked forward to its ultimate abolition ; 
but he did not sweep away the Temple itself. He 
rather paid it its customary honors. Mohammed saw 
the dangers of the Kaaba worship, and, once and again, 
proposed to destroy it altogether; but he had to deal 
with an historical faith, and with a shrine of immemo- 
rial antiquity, one which Diodorus Siculus, a hundred 
years before the Christian era, tells us was even then 
" most ancient, and was exceedingly revered by the 
whole Arab race." The traditions of the Kaaba ran 
back to Ishmael and Abraham — nay, even to Seth and 
Adam ;* and, as its very name, " Beit Allah," shows, it 

* Cf. Sura iii., 90. " The first temple that was founded for mankind 
was that in Becca (place of resort, i. e., Mecca) — Blessed, and a guidance 
to human beings. In it are evident signs, even the standing-place of 
Abraham, and he who entereth it is safe. And the pilgrimage to the 
temple is a service due to God from those who are able to journey thith- 
er." This sentence is still woven into the covering of the Kaaba sent an- 
nually by the Sultan. 



140 MOHAMMED AND MOHAMMEDANISM. 

might, in its first rude shape, have been erected by 
some such ancient patriarch as he who raised a pillar 
of rough stone where in his sleep he had seen the 
angels ascending and descending, and called it " Bethel, 
or Beit Allah : this is the house of God, and this the 
gate of heaven." Mohammed cherished also all the 
family associations of a Haschimite,* and all the local 
affections of a Meccan patriot ; and the family, and the 
place, and the country, the historical lore and the relig- 
ious imagination, combined to save the sacred shrine. 
Mohammed swept away the idols of the Kaaba ; he 
abolished the nude processions]* and the other abuses 
of its worship, but he retained the Kaaba itself ; and 
the quaint rites, which were old in Mohammed's time, 
are still religiously observed by the whole Moham- 
medan world. Seven times the pilgrim walks around 
the sacred mosque, seven times he kisses the Black 
Stone ; he drinks the brackish water of the sacred 
well Zemzem, buries the parings of his nails and the 
hair he has at length shaved in the consecrated 
ground ; he ascends Mount Arafat, and showers stones 
on the three mysterious pillars.^: Nor is the Kaaba 

* See a curious conversation between Mohammed and Ayesha on the 
Kaaba, illustrating the strong family feelings of the Prophet. Sprenger, 
vol. i., p. 315. 

t Sura vii., 27, seq. Cf. xxii., 27-40. 

% A plan of the Kaaba, as taken by Ali Bey, and a full description of 



THE KAABA AND ITS HISTORY. \±\ 

present to the mind at those times only when the pre- 
scribed pilgrimage is near at hand, in prospect or in 
retrospect. The first architectural requisite of every 
Mussulman house is the niche or arch which points 
with mathematical precision to the sacred pile ; and, 
guided by this, every devout Mussulman turns five 
times a day toward the Kiblah of the world in earnest 
prayer to God. " That man," says Dr. Johnson, " has 
little to be envied whose patriotism would not gain 
force on the plains of Marathon, or whose piety would 
not grow warm among the ruins of Iona." The cere- 
monies of the Kaaba may perhaps seem to us ridicu- 
lous, but the shrine is one which kindled the feelings of 
the Arab patriot, and roused the hopes of the Bedouin 
of the desert, ages before Miltiades fought, and tens 
of ages before Columban preached. It has been con- 
secrated in its later history by its connection with the 
grandest forward movement that the Eastern world has 
ever known ; and, in spite of the mummeries and the 
abuses which have grown around the pilgrimage of 
the Hadj in the course of ages, I should be slow in- 
deed to assert that the feelings which still draw, year 



the pilgrim ceremonies, which he himself went through, may he seen in 
Burton's " Pilgrimage," vol. iii., p. 61. Burckhardt and Burton have 
both described the Black Stone minutely from personal observation ; and 
a picture of it, the size of the original, is given in Muir, vol. h\, p. 18. 



142 MOHAMMED AND MOHAMMEDANISM. 

after year, Mussulmans by myriads from the burning 
sands of Africa, from the snows of Siberia, and the 
coral reefs of the Malays, toward a barren valley in 
Arabia, do not, on the whole, elevate rather than de- 
press them in the scale of humanity. In their own 
rough and imperfect way, they raise the mind of the 
nomad and the shepherd from the animal life of the 
present to the memories of the distant past, and the 
hopes of the far future. They are a living testimony 
to the unity of God, and a homage paid by the world 
to that Prophet who softened the savage breast and 
elevated the savage mind, and taught them what, but 
for him, they had never learned at all. 

It will be apparent, from what I have already said, 
that of the previous faiths existing in the world, the 
one which influenced Mohammed most w T as, beyond all 
question, Judaism. Insomuch that one who probably, 
with the single exception of Dr. Sprenger, knew more 
of the literature of the two faiths than any living man 
— one whose loss all who take interest in Eastern ques- 
tions are now deploring, and one who, had he lived, 
would probably have done ampler justice to Islam and 
its founder than perhaps any one else has done or can 
do — the late Emanuel Deutsch, summed up the con- 
nection between them in the celebrated dictum, that 
" when the Talmud was gathered in, the Koran began 



DEUTSCH AND THE TALMUD. ' 143 

—-post hoc ergo propter hoc" And he went on to in- 
dorse and to develop what Dean Milman had hinted be- 
fore him, that Islam was little else than a republication 
of Judaism, with such modifications as suited it to Ara- 
bian soil,jp£w the important addition of the prophetic 
mission of Mohammed.* The gifted author was, per- 
haps, from the very extent of his knowledge of Tal- 
mudical literature, prone to trace its influence every 
where ; and the proposition is, perhaps, stated a little 
too nakedly, and, as he, no doubt, would have been 
the first to admit, needs some important qualifications ; 
but nobody would deny that it is substantially true. 
Indeed, the general connection between race and creed 
has been proved by the Science of Comparative Re- 
ligion to be so intimate, that it could hardly in any 
case have been otherwise. It seems a cruel destiny 
that allows a man of great original genius to accumu- 
late such vast stores of recondite learning, and then 
snatches him away before he has had time to do more 
than leave the world dimly and sadly conscious of 
what it has lost in losing him ! 

Anyhow, the Koran teems with ideas, allusions, and 

* It must be remembered also that the ceremonialism of the Jews for 
the time almost entirely disappeared. For a full account of the influence 
of the Essenic communities and their doctrines on the rise of Islam, see 
Sprenger, vol. i., p. 17-21, and p. 30-35 ; and tor that of the Ebionites 
or Judaizing Christians to the east of the Jordan, p. 21-28. 



144 MOHAMMED AND MOHAMMEDANISM. 

even phraseology, drawn not so ranch from the written 
as from the oral Jewish law, from the traditions that 
grew around it, and the commentaries on it. The Tal- 
mud, in its two divisions of Plalacha and Haggada, 
sums up the intellectual and social and religious life 
of the Jews during a period of nearly a thousand 
years. It is the meeting-point of the three Monothe- 
istic creeds of the world : and, even with the imper- 
fect information that Eastern scholars have yet given 
respecting it, it has done much to throw light upon 
them all. Mohammed was never backward to ac- 
knowledge the intimate connection between his faith 
and that of the Jews. And in more than one passage 
of the Koran he refers with equal respect to their oral 
and to their written law. Nor did Christ really draw 
so broad a distinction between these two as might be 
imagined from the sweeping way in which he some- 
times denounces the Scribes and Pharisees. " What- 
soever they that sit in Moses's seat bid you observe, that 
observe and do."* And it is incontestable that the 
Pharisees, as a body, contained some of the best and 
noblest — Hillel and Shammai, Gamaliel and St. Paul — 
as it contained some of the worst and meanest, of their 
nation. 

* St. Matt, xxiii., 2-3. See this well argued in an article on the Tal- 
mud, Edinburgh Review for July, 1873. 



EXCLUSIVENESS OF JUDAISM. 145 

And, accordingly, Mohammed, during the early years 
of the Hegira, struggled hard, and, as it might have 
seemed to him, with every prospect of success,, to secure 
the adhesion of the Jewish tribes who dwelt around 
Medina. He appealed to their Scriptures, w 7 hich, he 
said, he came not to destroy, but to fulfill, and which, 
as he argued, for those who had eyes to see, pointed to 
him. " A prophet shall the Lord your God raise up 
unto you of your brethren like unto me ; to him shall 
ye hearken." " Was he not like unto Moses ?" he 
asked again and again ; " and did he not spring from 
their brethren, the children of Ishmael ?" He adapted 
the fasts and the feasts of the new religion to their 
model. He took from them the law of usury and the 
law of inheritance. He owes to them some of his reg- 
ulations respecting ablutions and unclean animals. He 
even, till he could hope no longer, made Jerusalem the 
Kiblah of the w r orld for the five daily prayers. 

It must have surprised Mohammed, with his half- 
knowledge of their history, that the Jews should be 
unable to enter into his views of a great catholic creed, 
or Religion of Humanity — the creed of Abraham — em- 
bracing Jews, Arabs, and Christians in one body. But 
it can surprise no one w T ho has ever in any degree en- 
tered into the religious genius of the Jewish race, or 
who has reflected on the almost insuperable difficulties 

G 



146 MOHAMMED AND MOHAMMEDANISM. 

which lay in the way of the Jews accepting that high- 
er creed, the Author of which it is their eternal honor 
to have produced, and their tragic destiny to have 
rejected. And the Bani Kainucaa, and the Bani Na- 
dhir, the Bani Koreitsa, and the Jews of Kheibar, bit- 
terly experienced in Mohammed's subsequent treatment 
of them the truth of the now all-too-familiar maxim 
in ecclesiastical history that they who differ least in 
religious matters hate the most. 

It is impossible to gain for one's self, and almost equal- 
ly so to give to others within a short space of time, any 
thing like an adequate idea either of the form or of the 
contents of the book of which Mohammed, whatever 
the general influences brought to bear upon his mind, 
was the undisputed author, and which still underlies 
the life of the vast fabric of the Mohammedan world. 
In my first Lecture I compared and contrasted the 
Koran with the Bible; but it is necessary, perhaps, to 
say something more of its leading characteristics, or the 
want of them. The Koran defies analysis, for that pre- 
supposes something like method in the thing to be ana- 
lyzed. It can hardly be characterized by any one epi- 
thet, for there is not a single Sura of any length which 
sustains a uniform character throughout. It has often 
been remarked that there is no more striking proof of 
the discrepancies of national taste than the diametrical- 



HISTORY OF THE KORAN. 147 

]y opposite opinions held by the cultivated classes of 
East and West on the literary merits of the Koran. 
Having performed repeatedly, for the purpose of these 
Lectures, a task which Bunsen and Sprenger and Eenan 
all pronounce to be almost impossible — that of reading 
the Koran continuously from beginning to end, both in 
the orthodox and chronological order — I have acquired 
a better right, perhaps, than most people to indorse the 
superficial opinion that dullness is, to a European who 
is ignorant of Arabic, the prevailing characteristic of 
the book as a whole until he begins to make a mi- 
nute study of it. The importance of the subjects it 
handles, the unique interest attaching to the speaker, 
and the unaffected reverence with which every utter- 
ance is still regarded by so large a portion of the 
world, are insufficient to redeem it from this general 
reproach. 

Endless assertions as to what the Koran is, and what 
it is not, warnings drawn from previous Arabian history, 
especially the lost tribes of Ad and Thamud ; Jewish or 
Arab legends of the heroes of the Old Testament — sto- 
ries told, and, it must be added, often spoiled in the 
telling of them; laws, ceremonial and moral, civil and 
sumptuary ; personal apologies ; curses showered upon 
Abu Lahab or the whole community of the Jews ; all 
this alternates with sublime revelations of the attributes 



148 MOHAMMED AND MOHAMMEDANISM. 

of the Godhead, bursts of admiration for Christ him- 
self — though not for the views held of him by his so- 
called followers — flights of poetry, scathing rebukes of 
the hypocrite, the ungrateful, the unmerciful. 

That the book as a whole is a medley, however it 
may be arranged, will seem only natural when we re- 
member the way in which it was composed, preserved, 
edited, and stereotyped. Dictated from time to time 
by Mohammed to his disciples, it was by them partly 
treasured in their memories, partly written down on 
shoulder-bones of mutton or on oyster shells, on bits of 
wood or tablets of stone, which, being thrown pell-mell 
into boxes, and jumbled up together, like the leaves of 
the Cumean Sibyl after a gust of wind, were not put 
into any shape at all till after the Prophet's death by 
order of Abu Bakr. The w T ork of the editor consisted 
simply in arranging the Suras in the order of their re- 
spective lengths — the longest first, the shortest last ; and, 
though the book once afterward passed through the ed- 
itor's hands, this is substantially the shape in which the 
Koran has come down to us. Yarious readings, which 
would seem, how r ever, to have been of very slight im- 
portance, having crept into the different copies, a re- 
vising committee was appointed by order of the Kaliph 
Othman, and an mithorized edition having been thus 
prepared "to prevent the texts differing, like those of the 



CHARACTERISTICS OF THE KORAN. 149 

Jews and Christians," all previous copies were collected 
and burned. 

Nor is it to be wondered at that the principle of ar- 
rangement, combined with the impossibility of keeping 
the rhyme or rhythm in any translation, have prevented 
European critics, as a body, from indorsing the judg- 
ment, not merely of Mohammed himself, for that, if it 
had stood alone, might be looked upon as partial, but 
also of the whole Eastern world. 

" If ye be in doubt as to our revelation to our serv- 
ant, then produce a Sura like unto it, and summon your 
witnesses, God and all, if ye be men of truth."* 

And again, "If men and genii were assembled to- 
gether that they might produce a book like the Koran, 
they must fail."f 

It is to be remarked that Mohammed and Moham- 
med's enemies are quite at one as to the merits of the 
book. The Arabs said that the Koran could not be 
Mohammed's work because it was too good. Moham- 
med replied to the effect that they were both right and 
wrong. They were right, for it was too good for Mo- 
hammed uninspired; they were wrong, for it was too 
good to have come originally from any one but the 
All-MercifaLJ 

* Sura ii., 21. f Sura xvii., 90. 

X Sura xvi., 105, compared with xxv., 5, etc. 



150 MOHAMMED AND MOHAMMEDANISM. 

Of course, by the existing arrangement, even &uch 
psychological development as there was in the Koran 
has been obscured ; for, as a rule, what the editor put 
last comes really first. These are the burning utter- 
ances of the Prophet, who knows no influence but the 
inspiration pent within him ; in these are the pith and 
poetry of the whole ; while the elaborate and labored 
arguments, the apologice pro vita sua, are the product 
of the mind which the force of circumstances and the 
love of spiritual power — that most exquisite and most 
dangerous of fascinations — had driven to become con- 
scious of itself. The very titles of the earlier Suras, 
the imprecations with which they abound, the imagery 
they employ, suggest the shepherd of the desert, the 
despised visionary, the poet #nd the prophet. " The 
folding up," " the cleaving in sunder," " the celestial 
signs," "the unity," "the overwhelming," "the striking," 
"the inevitable," "the earthquake," "the war-horses," 
tell their own story. There are passages in these, 
though it must be admitted they are rare, which may 
be compared in grandeur even with some of the sub- 
limest passages of Job, of David, or of Isaiah. 

Take, for instance, the vision of the last day with 
which the eighty-first Sura, " The folding up," begins : 

" When the sun shall be folded up, 
And when the stars shall fall, 
And when the mountains shall be set in motion, 



POETRY OF THE KORAN. \§\ 

And when the she-camels with young shall be neglected, 

And when the wild beasts shall be huddled together, 

And when the seas shall boil, 

And when souls shall be joined again to their bodies, 

And when the female child that had been buried alive shall ask for 

what crime she was put to death, 
And when the leaves of the Book, shall be unrolled, 
And when the Heavens shall be stripped away like a skin, 
And when Hell shall be made to blaze, 
And when Paradise shall be brought near — 
Every soul shall know what it has done." 

Allusions to the monotony of the desert; the sun in 
its rising brightness ; the moon in its splendor ; are va- 
ried in the Koran by much more vivid mental visions 
of the Great Day when men shall be like moths scat- 
tered abroad, and the mountains shall become like card- 
ed wool of various colors, driven by the wind. No won- 
der that Labyd, the greatest poet of his time, forbore to 
enter the poetic lists with Mohammed when he recited 
to him the description of the infidel in the second Sura : 

" They are like one w T ho kindleth a fire, and when it 
hath thrown its light on all around him, God taketh 
away the light and leaveth him in darkness, and they 
can not see." 

"Deaf, dumb, blind, therefore they shall not retrace 
their steps." 

" They are like those who, when there cometh a 
storm-cloud out of heaven big with darkness, thunder, 
and lightning, thrust their fingers into their ears be- 



152 MOHAMMED AND MOHAMMEDANISM. 

cause of the thunder-clap for fear of death. God is 
round about the infidels." 

" The lightning almost snatcheth away their eyes : so 
oft as it gleameth on them, they walk on in it ; but 
when darkness closeth upon them, they stop ; and if 
God pleased, of their ears and of their eyes would he 
surely deprive them : verily God is almighty." 

And at the end of the same Sura, which, it is to be 
remembered, appeared quite late in the Prophet's life, 
at a period when it might have been expected that the 
cares of government would dim the brightness of the 
Prophet's visions, we find the sublime description of 
Him whom it had been the mission of his life to pro- 
claim, and which is still engraved on precious stones, 
and worn by devout Mussulmans : 

" God ! there is no god but he, the Living, the Eter- 
nal. Slumber doth not overtake him, neither sleep ; to 
him belongeth all that is in heaven and in earth. Who 
is he that can intercede with him but by his own per- 
mission ? He knoweth that which is past and that 
which is, to come unto them, and they shall not com- 
prehend any thing of his knowledge but so far as he 
pleaseth. His throne is extended over heaven and 
earth, and the upholding of both is no burden unto 
him. He is the Lofty and the Great." 

Almost equally well too, as a proof of his poetic 



FITS OF INSPIRATION, 153 

inspiration, Mohammed might have quoted that other 
description of Infidelity, also produced late in his life, 
and pronounced by Sir William Muir and by Emanuel 
Deutsch to be one of the grandest in the whole Koran : 

"As to the infidels, their works are like the Serab 
on the plain,* which the thirsty traveler thinketh to be 
water, and then, when he cometh thereto, he findeth it 
to be nothing; but he findeth God about him, and he 
will fully pay him his account; for swift in taking an 
account is God ; 

" Or as the darkness over a deep sea, billows riding 
upon billows below, and clouds above ; one darkness on 
another darkness : when a man stretcheth forth his hand 
he is far from seeing it ; he to whom God doth not 
grant light, no light at all hath he." + 

Strange and graphic accounts have been preserved to 
us by Ayesha of the physical phenomena attending the 
Prophet's fits of inspiration. He heard as it were the 
ringing of a bell ; he fell down as one dead ; he sobbed 
like a camel ; he felt as though he were being rent in 
pieces ; and when he came to himself he felt as though 
words had been written on his heart. And when Abu 
Bakr, " he who would have sacrificed father and moth- 

* That is, the Mirage of the Desert. 

t Sura xxiv., 39, 40. See Muir, vol. iii., p. 308 ; and Deutsch, "Islam,'' 
in Quarterly Review, No. 254, p. 346. 

G2 



154 MOHAMMED AND MOHAMMEDANISM. 

er for Mohammed/ 5 burst into tears at the sight of 
the Prophet's whitening hair, " Yes," said Mohammed, 
"Hud and its sisters, the Terrific Suras, have turned it 
white before its time."* 

But in order to make the general outline of Moham- 
med's system, which I am attempting to draw, as little 
imperfect as it is possible for me to make it within the 
limits I have prescribed myself, it is necessary to touch 
upon three difficult questions, which have acquired dif- 
ferent degrees of prominence at successive periods in 
the history of Mohammedanism — questions which have 
been much misunderstood, and sometimes intentionally 
misrepresented, and which call more loudly even than 
other matters which we have been considering for a 
laborious investigation and a candid judgment. They 
need also above all things the historical sense, which 
does not apply the standard of the nineteenth century 
to the seventh, of Europeans to Asiatics, or of a high 
civilization to semi-barbarism; and which is content to 
balance the evil against the good, without requiring a 
verdict either for an absolute acquittal or an uncom- 
promising condemnation. The three questions I refer 
to are the relation of Mohammedanism to Miracles, to 
Fatalism, and to wars for the sake of Religion. I 

* Suras xi.,Hud; hi, "The Inevitable;" ci.,"The Striking." See 
Mivir, vol. ii., p. 88. 



THE MIRACULOUS. 155 

propose in the remainder of this Lecture to deal with 
these in succession ; not I hope consciously shirking any 
difficulty, or glossing over what is unquestionably bad, 
but, of course, not professing in any degree to exhaust 
the subject. 

I. First, then, Miracles. Mohammedanism is a sys- 
tem in many respects unique, but in none more so than 
in this, that alone of the great religions of the world it 
does not, in its authoritative documents, rest its claims 
to reception upon miracles; and yet the attitude of 
Mohammed toward the miraculous has been made the 
ground by different people of very conflicting accusa- 
tions. Superficial observers up to the middle of the 
last century, and Christian missionaries of later times, 
whose zeal has not always been tempered by accurate 
knowledge of their subject, fastening on the fantastic 
character of the few miracles attributed to Mohammed 
by the pious credulity of his followers or the " succes- 
sors," have triumphantly torn the mask from the "im- 
postor;" and have gone on to contrast, as well they 
might from their point of view, the purposeless char- 
acter and impossibility of his supposed miracles with 
the sober nature and the moral purpose which underlie 
the miracles of the New Testament, however super- 
natural they may be. Other writers — White in his 
" Bampton Lectures," and Paley in his " Evidences of 



156 MOHAMMED AND MOHAMMEDANISM. 

Christianity," and Butler in his "Analogy" — prefer- 
ring to appeal to what Mohammed said of himself, 
rather than what was said of him by others, have driven 
home the contrast between Mohammedanism and Chris- 
tianity by pointing out that Christianity is attested by 
supernatural manifestations, and is therefore divine, 
while Mohammedanism is neither the one nor the other. 
Let us inquire what the Koran itself, the only reliable 
authority on the subject, says, and then make one or 
two remarks on the general question. 

In the thirteenth Sura we read : 

" The unbelievers say, Unless a sign be sent down 
w T ith him from his Lord, we will not believe. But thou 
art a preacher only, O Mohammed !" 

Mohammed replies that God alone can work mira- 
cles ; and, after specifying some of them, he says : 

"God alone knoweth that which is hidden, and 
that which is revealed. He is the Great and the Most 
High." 

In the seventh Sura the infidels ask why Mohammed 
had not been sent with miracles, like previous prophets? 
Because, replied Mohammed, miracles had proved in- 
adequate to convince. Noah had been sent with signs, 
and with what effect ? Where was the lost tribe of 
Thamud ? They had refused to receive the preaching 
of the prophet Saled unless he showed them a sign, and 



MOHAMMED'S ATTITUDE TO MIRACLES. 157 

caused the rock to bring forth a living camel. He did 
what they asked. In scorn they had cut off the camel's 
feet, and then, daring the Prophet to fulfill his threats 
of judgment, were found dead in their beds next morn- 
ing, stricken by the angel of the Lord. There are some 
seventeen places in the Koran in which Mohammed is 
challenged to \^ork a sign, and he answers them all to 
the same effect. 

There are in the whole of the Sacred Book only two 
supposed exceptions to the attitude thus assumed by 
him; and those who know how large a part the Miraj, 
or miraculous journey on the Borah,* bears in popular 
conceptions of Mohammedanism, will learn with sur- 
prise, if they have not gone much into the matter, that 
there is only one passage in the Koran which can be 
tortured into an allusion to the journey to heaven : 

"Praise be to Him who transferred his servant by 
night from the sacred temple to one that is more re- 
motest 

To make this refer at all to the Miraj, we have to in- 
sert the word "Mecca" in one place, and "Jerusalem" 
or " seventh heaven" in another, and this, though in the 
sixtieth verse of the same Sura Mohammed tells us he 

* "Borak" after all means only Lightning: the Barak of the Jews ; 
the Barca of the Carthaginians, 
t Sura xvii., 1. 



158 MOHAMMED AND MOHAMMEDANISM. 

was not sent with miracles, because people would not 
believe them; and in the sixty -second verse express 
mention is made of a vision he had had, beyond doubt 
of this very journey ! ' So, too, in the verse, " The hour 
hath approached, and the moon hath been split in sun- 
der :"* people were so anxious to see an allusion to 
the extravagant story of the moon's descending on the 
Kaaba, and entering Mohammed's sleeve, that they for- 
got that "the hour" means "the hour of judgment," 
and that the tense used is the prophetic preterite. To 
the eye of the Semitic " nabi," whether Jewish or Arab, 
the future is as the past.f 

Without discussing the question of miracles at length, 
I would make three remarks on the general subject : 
First, that in a new religion the real cause for wonder 
is, not that it claims to be founded on miracles, but that 
it should ever be able to profess to do without them. 
In certain stages of the human mind there is no natural 
phenomenon which will not bear a supernatural inter- 
pretation. In fact, the supernatural is then the rule ; 
the natural, the exception. Gibbon, I think, has some- 
where asked whether there exists a single instance in 



* Sura liv., 1. 

t Cf. the past tense used in Sura xcviii., called " The Victory: "Ver- 
ily, we have won for thee an undoubted victory " — believed to point to 
the conquest of Mecca two years later. 



MIRACLES CONSIDERED. 159 

ecclesiastical history of a Father of the Church claim- 
ing for himself the power of working miracles, and I 
am not aware that the question has ever been answered 
in the affirmative. And yet w T e know that during many 
centuries there w r as hardly a Father of the Church who 
did not have miracles attributed to him by other men 
of equal, or even greater, reputed sanctity. Among 
many others, I need only mention the names of St. Ben- 
edict and St. Martin of Tours, of St. Bernard and St. 
Francis of Assisi. They attribute even to inanimate re- 
mains, and to relics, which were often fictitious, -powers 
which they would never dream of claiming for them- 
selves. St. Augustine, whose honesty is above suspicion, 
tells us gravely that he had ascertained, on certain evi- 
dence, that some small fragments of the disinterred rel- 
ics of St. Stephen had, in his own diocese, within two 
years, performed no less than seventy miracles, and 
three of them raisings from the dead ! St. Bernard 
was believed by his admirers to have excommunicated 
some flies which teased him, and "they straightway fell 
down in heaps." And if such be the mental atmos- 
phere of a Church in its adolescence, a fortiori will 
an age which is capable of producing or receiving a 
new religion throw a mystic halo of supernaturalism 
around the supreme objects of its reverence. Even if 
the founder himself disclaims the power of working 



160 MOHAMMED AND MOHAMMEDANISM. 

miracles, they will be thrust upon him in the most 
perfect good faith by the warm imagination of his 
disciples. 

Second, and what would seem to follow from the 
first: In proportion as exact knowledge advances, the 
sphere of the supernatural is narrowed; and therefore 
a proof which is fitted for an imaginative and creative 
age is not best suited for a critical and scientific one. 
Many minds, no doubt, will always crave the super- 
natural, and they will always find plenty of it ; but to 
many, -also, in an age like this, miracles have been a 
stumbling-block, and have seemed a reason for reject- 
ing the religion which is made to rest mainly on them. 
Where there is a choice, it is at least wise to select the 
strongest ground we have ; nor is there any fear that 
Science will ever explain too much. Behind what she 
explains there will always remain the unexplained and 
the unexplainable. Let her classify and explain the 
phenomena of Mind and Matter as she will, but will she 
ever be able to tell us what Mind and Matter are them- 
selves ? Let her analyze the springs of human action, 
and dissect the complex anatomy of the human con- 
science; but the religious instinct will still remain, as 
an ultimate fact of human nature; and that instinct 
will find without, or supply from its own resources, the 
verities with which it deals — the verities which supple- 



MOHAMMED'S ATTITUDE TO MIRACLES. \Q\ 

ment and explain to it the facts of Nature, and are not 
explained by them ; which assure us that this life is not 
the only life, nor death extinction ; and that love, the 
main source of human happiness, is not given us to 
make all real happiness impossible ; which, in a word, 
supply the soul with the supreme objects for its wor- 
ship and its aspirations. 

Third: I w^ould remark that the answers given by Mo- 
hammed himself to those who demanded miracles — that 
God gave the power of working miracles to whom he 
pleased ; that other prophets had wrought miracles, and 
had not been believed ; that he who could .not know 
even himself adequately could not know what God had 
hidden; that there were greater miracles in Nature than 
any which could be wrought outside of it; that the 
Koran itself was a miracle — find at least one line of 
thought in a greater than Mohammed, which is not op- 
posed to, but identical with them. People have raised 
questions about the authenticity and meaning of much 
that is in the Gospels, but, by the rules of all critical 
interpretation, what they can least question is the genu- 
ineness and accuracy of those passages which the Dis- 
ciples have, in their undoubted honesty, recorded, as it 
were, in spite of themselves, and which appear to run 
counter to other and loftier conceptions of that majestic 
character on whose partially preserved utterances all 



162 MOHAMMED AND MOHAMMEDANISM. 

Christendom still hangs. He who said he could of his 
own self do nothing; it was the Spirit which quickened 
— the flesh profiteth nothing ; the words that he spake 
unto them, they were spirit and they were life ; he who, 
when his disciples wondered at the withered fig-tree, 
told them that the trust in God which underlay his act 
would enable even them to do greater things ; w T ho, we 
are told, could not, in certain places, work miracles be- 
cause of their unbelief; and when people declined to 
accept his teaching on higher grounds, told them, w T ith 
a touch of scorn, that they might do so if they liked on 
the lower ground, for "his very works' sake;" and, last- 
ly, who said it was an evil and adulterous generation 
which sought after a sign, and that no sign should be 
given it ; and that if a man believed not Moses and the 
Prophets, not even would he repent though one arose 
from the dead : in one aspect, at all events, his teach- 
ing agreed with the Arabian Prophet whom Christians 
have so much discredited. He, at all events, treated the 
miraculous as subordinate to the moral evidences of his 
mission, and struck upon a vein of thought and touched 
a chord of feeling which, it seems to me, is reconcilable 
at once with the onward march of Science and all the 
admitted weaknesses of human nature.* 



* Compare throughout " Literature and Dogma," caps. v. and vi., es- 
pecially p. 129, 154. 



FATALISM. 163 

II. Second, Fatalism. I have spoken above of the 
extraordinary impulse given to the earlier followers of 
Mohammed by their vivid sense of God's personal pres- 
ence with them. Inspiring, indeed, this principle then 
was ; for it must never be forgotten, as I hope now 
to prove, that the belief in an absolute predestination, 
which turns men into mere puppets, and all human 
life into a grim game of chess, wherein men are the 
pieces, moved by the invisible Hand of but a single Play- 
er, and w T hich is now so general in Mohammedan coun- 
tries, was, all appearances to the contrary, no part of the 
creed of the Prophet himself or of his immediate suc- 
cessors ;* and I venture, therefore, to think that Gibbon 
is w T rong in tracing the desperate valor of the primitive 
Mussulmans mainly to the notion that since there was 
no chance, there need be no fear : the germ, indeed, of 
fatalism was there, but its effects were as yet any thing 
but fatalistic. 

It is of course true that there are many passages in 
the Koran which assert in the strongest way the fore- 
knowledge of God. For instance, " The fate of every 
man have we bound about his neck ;" and the relations 
of the slain at the battle of Ohud are comforted by the 
assurance that every one must die at his appointed time, 

* Cf. National Review for July, 1858, p. 154. 



164 MOHAMMED AND MOHAMMEDANISM. 

whether it be in his own bed or on the field of battle. 
Nor is it possible to any religion to reconcile the con- 
flicting dogmas of the foreknowledge of God and of the 
free-will of man. The New Testament does not try to 
do so. Most assuredly our own Articles of Religion, 
however successful they may be in finding a compro- 
mise between opposing views on other things, fail to 
effect a compromise here. Press to its logical result 
either the omnipotence or the omniscience of God, and 
what becomes of man's free-will ? But logic is not the 
only criterion of truth, nor is it the only rule of life ; 
and consequently there is hardly a religion which does 
not, in words at all events, assert as strongly as possi- 
ble God's foreknowledge ; in acts, at all events, man's 
freedom. Sometimes one will be the more prominent, 
sometimes the other. 

The Prophet of Arabia naturally dwelt most on those 
attributes of God which, throwing the widest gulf be- 
tween the Creator and his creatures, would, once and 
for all, rescue the Arabs from worshiping w T hat their 
own hands had made.* He inculcates hope in adver- 
sity and humility in success, on the ground that there 
is a supreme Ruler who never leaves the helm; who 
knows what is really best for man when man himself 

* Cf. Gobineau, "Les Religions et les Philosophies dans l'Asie Centrale." 
See the whole passage on this subject, p. 72, 73. 



MOHAMMED NOT A FATALIST. 165 

does not ; and whose supreme will and power, where he 
asserts them, can not be crossed by the efforts of the 
creatures of his hand. But this is not the only side to 
his teaching. He asserts that man is a free agent — free 
to refuse or to accept the divine message; responsible 
for his acts, and therefore deserving, now of punish- 
ment, now of reward. The future, in fact, is in his 
own hands, and Mohammed incessantly urges him to 
use his opportunities. Ali, the most saintly, I would 
almost say the most Christian, of all Mussulmans, pro- 
nounces those who say the will is not free to be heretics.* 
There are at least four sects among Mohammedans that 
differ from one another on the one point of predestina- 
tion and free-will. One of them, the Mutazalites, al- 
most assert what philosophers have called the "liberty 
of indifference ;" and there is little doubt that Moham- 
med himself, if the alternative had been clearly pre- 
sented to him, would have had more in common with 
Pelagius than with Augustine, w T ith Arminius than with 
Calvin. 

It is difficult to believe that if Mohammed had been 
the consistent fatalist he is often represented to have 
been, he would have made prayer one of the four prac- 
tical duties enjoined upon the Faithful, and that on an 

* Quoted by Gobineau, loc. cit. 



166 MOHAMMED AND MOHAMMEDANISM. 

equal or even a higher footing than almsgiving, fasting, 
and pilgrimage. He is said to have called it the Pillar 
of Eeligion and the Key of Paradise. He told a tribe 
which, after its conversion, begged for a remission of 
some of the daily prayers enjoined upon them, that 
there could be no good in the religion in which there 
was no prayer ; and, according to one of his successors, 
prayer of itself lifts men half way to heaven. Now, if 
all events are absolutely fixed by the divine will and 
foreseen by the divine mind, then there is no possibil- 
ity, I do not say of altering the fixed laws of Nature — 
for that is a power which few would claim for prayer — 
but even of a man's improving in the smallest degree, 
by any acts or petitions of his, his own spiritual condi- 
tion. Prayer would thus be a superfluity and delusion 
if explained in any other way than as an aspiration of 
the heart toward God, which, being an end in itself, 
necessarily brings its own answer with it. Now, wheth- 
er this last is a true view of prayer or not, it was cer- 
tainly not Mohammed's view. In neither case would 
he have been quite a consistent fatalist; but it is not 
likely that he could have overlooked the glaring incon- 
sistencies involved between an absolute predestination, 
on the one hand, and material answers to prayer on the 
other. The prayers that he enjoined five times a day* 
* It is worth noticing, in passing, that the five daily prayers, like the 



MOHAMMED'S VIEW OF PRAYER, 167 

are still offered with full confidence in their efficacy by 
all devout Mussulmans ; and the cry of the Muezzin, be- 
fore daybreak, from a myriad mosques and minarets — 
" Prayer is better than sleep, prayer is better than 
sleep" — is a living witness, wherever the influence of 
the Prophet of Arabia has extended, more vivid than 
the letter of the Koran itself — overpowering even the 
lethargy and quietism of the East — to Mohammed's be- 
lief in God's providential government of the world, and 
in the freedom of man's will. 

Mohammed, on one occasion, complains of the Jews 
that "if good fortune betide them, they say it is from 
God ; if evil betide them, they say it is from Moham- 
med:" say rather, he suggests, all is from God. But 
what, he asks in the very next verse, has come to these 
people that they are not near to understanding what is 
told them 1 

"Whatever good betideth thee is from God, and 
whatever betideth thee of evil is from thyself."* 

There are the two contradictories brought face to 

face, and left fronting one another for all time; and 

can any religion do more, and perhaps I may add less, 

than this ? 

rite of circumcision, though universally observed by Mussulmans, are not 
enjoined in the Koran itself. Circumcision is not even mentioned in the 
Koran : it is one of the many Pre-Islamitic practices which Mohammed 
tacitly sanctioned. 
* Sura iv., 80, 81. 



168 MOHAMMED AND MOHAMMEDANISM. 

It is not difficult to see how one and the same doc- 
trine of God's foreknowledge, on the one hand, and of 
his actual intervention in human affairs on the other, 
may have diametrically opposite effects in different nat- 
ures, or in even the same natures under different cir- 
cumstances. 

" There is a tide in the affairs of men 
Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune; 
Omitted, all the voyage of their life 
Is bound in shallows and in miseries." 

The early Mussulmans, in the new burst of life 
breathed into them by Mohammed, it inspired with 
double energy and double enthusiasm, as in their best 
days it inspired the Puritans, the Covenanters, the Pil- 
grim Fathers. But to their descendants in their more 
normal state — the lethargic Soufy, the brooding Sepoy, 
the insensate Turk ; I would add, to those religious peo- 
ple who refuse to prevent the miseries and the diseases 
which Nature they think has attached to guilt — it fur- 
nishes with a new excuse for that life of inactivity to 
which they are already too much disposed, since they 
believe that they are acquiescing, as in duty bound, in 
the immutable decrees of God.* 

III. One more question remains to be discussed in this 
Lecture — the wars of Islam, and the relation they bear 

* See an eloquent passage on this subject in an article of the National 
Review for October, 1861, entitled "The Great Arabian," p. 312. 



OPPOSITE EFFECTS OF THE SAME DOCTRINE. 169 

to Mohammed's religion. It is true that it was not till 
the Prophet found himself, to his surprise, in a position 
of power at Medina, that w T e hear even a whisper of 
the sword as an instrument of conversion. It is then, 
and not till then, that we are told that other prophets 
have been sent by God to attest his different attributes 
in their own person and by their miraculous acts; but 
that men had closed their eyes to the character and de- 
nied the miracles even of Moses and of Christ. What 
remained to the last of the prophets except that he 
should try the last argument of the sword ? Was the 
sword then an after-thought and an accidental append- 
age merely to Mohammed's religion, or was it an essen- 
tial part ? I am inclined to think that the nature of the 
case itself and the verdict of subsequent experience will 
tend to show that, however absent it was from Moham- 
med's thoughts at first, and however alien to his gentle 
and forgiving nature, it came in the progress of events, 
to some extent in his own life, and still more so in the 
lives of his successors, to be the latter. How this came 
about requires careful explanation. 

Mohammed's notion of God had never been that of 
a great moral Being who designs that the creatures he 
has created should, from love and gratitude to him, be- 
come one w T ith him, or even assimilated to him. Mo- 
hammed believed in God, feared, reverenced, and obey- 

H 



170 MOHAMMED AND MOHAMMEDANISM. 

ed him after his light, as few Jews or Christians ever 
did ; but he could hardly be said in the Christian, or 
even the Jewish sense of the word, to love God. It is 
possible that repeated acts of obedience to a God whom 
he always represents as compassionate and merciful 
might imply or result in love; but at all events with 
him love was not, as it is in Christianity, the fulfilling 
of the law, the inspiring motive to action, the sum of 
its theology as of its morality. Had it been so, Mo- 
hammed would have seen more reason to doubt wheth- 
er the sword could ever be its best ally ; but though he 
must in any case have seen that it was impossible to 
force men to love God, it may have crossed his mind 
that it w T as possible to force men to abstain from .idol- 
atry, to acknowledge one God with their lips, to fear 
and to obey him at all events in their outward acts. 

Had Mohammed remained master of himself — had 
he remained, that is to say, the simple Prophet through- 
out his career — it is possible, on the one hand, that his 
message would never have spread in his lifetime be- 
yond the walls of Mecca and Medina; and it is more 
than probable, on the other, that his character might 
now be held up to the world as that which we feel the 
founder of a religion ought to be ; that which Con- 
fucius and Buddha were, and that which Mohammed 
himself, throughout his life at Mecca, unquestionably 



USE OF THE SWORD, ifl 

was — a perfect model of the saintly virtues. There is 
one glory of the founder of a religion, another of the 
founder of a nation, another of the founder of an em- 
pire. They are better kept distinct; and the limits of 
the human faculties are an adequate security against 
their being often found united in one person. It is 
the uncongenial mixture of earthly needs and heavenly 
aspirations which has made Mohammed at once a small- 
er and a greater man — at once more and less- command- 
ing than he would otherwise have been. What he gains 
as a ruler of men, he loses as a guide and as an exam- 
ple ; and people are, naturally enough, led to condemn 
the prophet for the drastic energy of the leader, and 
the leader for the shortcomings of the prophet. It is, 
perhaps, inevitable that Christians should do so; for the 
image of Him whose kingdom was not of this world, 
who did not strive nor cry, whose servants were never 
to draw the sword in his defense, forces itself upon the 
mind, in silent and reproachful antithesis to the mixed 
and sullied character of the Prophet-soldier Mohammed. 
The trumpet-call is not the still, small voice; it is im- 
measurably below it : but there has been room for both 
in the development of humanity. 

Now, on a sudden, Mohammed found himself in a 
position he had not courted, which was forced on him 
by his enemies ; and the exigencies of his exiled f ol- 



172 MOHAMMED AND MOHAMMEDANISM. 

lowers — the need of sustenance, the appetite for plun- 
der, the 'desire of revenge, and the longing for their 
homes, no less than the impending attack of the Ko- 
reishites — drove the Prophet for the first time to place 
himself at their head ; and, for temporal purposes only, 
to unsheath the sword. Mohammed thus became a gen- 
eral by accident; and the extraordinary success of his 
first ventures deepened the impression, already half 
natural to an Arab, that the sword might be a legiti- 
mate instrument of spiritual warfare, and that God had 
put into his power a new means, where all other means, 
as in the case of previous prophets, had failed. At all 
events the sword, originally drawn for temporal pur- 
poses only, was found to have, half unexpectedly, an- 
swered another end as well. It was found that the re- 
ligion, once started by the sword, was soon able to throw 
the sword away. The march of the Faith anticipated 
the march of the army of the Faithful, and the all but 
uniform success of the armies, when they had to fight, 
seemed to stamp the means used with the divine ap- 
probation; and so it was that Mohammed felt less and 
less scruple as to the use of the sword where it seemed 
to him to be wanted ; and at the close of his life, in one 
of the last Suras of the Koran, we are hardly surprised 
to find the stern command and the "magnificent pre- 
sentiment :" 



SPIRITUAL AND TEMPORAL POWER, 173 

" Fight on, therefore, till there be no temptation to 
idolatry, and the religion becomes God's alone."* 

The early Kaliphs obeyed the precepts and imitated 
the example of the warrior-Prophet, and went forth 
on their enterprise in all the plenitude of autocratic 
power ; there was no rivalry between Church and State 
to tie their hands, for the Kaliph was the head of both 
in one ; the State, so far as it had any separate existence 
at all, being simply a creature of the Church. And 
let us here turn aside for a moment to examine the 
relation then subsisting between the spiritual and 
temporal power, first in the Western, and then in the 
Eastern Empire, and to contrast it with the extraordi- 
nary concentration of all the energies of a new-born en- 
thusiasm placed in the hands of the Kaliph. We shall 
then see, on the one hand, from what a vantage-ground 
the Arabs, at that precise moment, entered the lists to 
contend with Christendom ; but, on the other, we shall 
note how few are the men and how rare the occasions 
on which power of any kind can afford to dispense with 
those checks which are a condition of its permanence, 
and which alone can prevent it from developing into 
unbridled tyranny or dying of inanition. 

The Christianity of the West then had, centuries be- 

* Sura viii., 40. Cf. also xxii., 40, and ix., passim: perhaps the last 
Sura Mohammed composed. 



174 MOHAMMED AND MOHAMMEDANISM. 

fore this, organized an im/perium in imperio which 
afforded a substantial check to the tyranny of the em- 
perors, and, by its moral majesty, could restrain a savage 
barbarian even in the full career of conquest. Am- 
brose had sternly rebuked Theodosius ; Innocent had 
mitigated the horrors of the sack of Eome by Alaric ; 
Leo had turned back Attila, and half disarmed Gen- 
seric. The transference of the seat of empire to Con- 
stantinople forced the Bishops of Eome into a political 
prominence which would not otherwise have belonged 
to them ; and, in process of time, the spiritual power 
thus fortified began to contend, on something like equal 
terms, with the temporal. Gregory the Great, whose 
pontificate ended shortly before the " call " of the 
Prophet of Arabia, was the virtual sovereign of Eome, 
able to protect it alike from the ferocity of the Lom- 
bards and from the pretentious weakness of the Ex- 
archs. Before long the sacerdotal monarchs who reign- 
ed on the Tiber were to be seen deposing by right di- 
vine one Frankish dynasty which ruled upon the Ehine ; 
setting up another of their own creation ; and, finally, 
in the person of Charles the Great, giving new body 
to the phantom of the ancient Eoman Empire which 
had never ceased to flit before the mind of Europe, 
and fancying, in their superb audacity, that a breath 
might overthrow what a breath had made. And by the 



SPIRITUAL AND TEMPORAL POWER, 175 

time that the Eternal City itself heard the dreaded 
Tecbir at their gates, it was to a Pope and not a Ose- 
sar — a Pope, too, elected in hot haste, without even the 
formal sanction of the Csesar — that Kome owed her 
safety !* 

But the religion of the Eastern Empire^ to quote 
Gibbon's epigram, could teach men only " to suffer and 
to yield." The Patriarch of Constantinople, unlike the 
Patriarch of Eome, was the puppet of the emperor, in- 
dorsed his worst deeds, or was swept away if he ob- 
jected to them.f And the Saracens who besieged the 
ceremonious Emperor of the East in his own capital 
must have enjoyed, if they could read, the form of 
service, prescribed by Church and State together, for 
the day on which the emperor should trample on the 
necks of the captive Mussulmans, while the singers 
were to chant, " Thou hast made mine enemies my 
footstool," and the people were to shout forty times 
the " Kyrie Eleeson.";j: The crusading spirit which 

* Leo IV. 

t See the history of the Iconoclastic Emperors generally, A.D. 717-841, 
and their dealings with the Patriarchs of Constantinople. Read especially, 
on the one hand, the account of the dastardly submission of the Patriarch 
Anastasius to Leo, and, on the other, the horrible cruelties inflicted on 
the Patriarch Constantine by Copronymus. Milman, vol. ii., chap. vii. 

% See the " De Ceremoniis Aulse et Ecclesia? Byzantinse'' of Constan- 
tine Porphyrogenitus, vol. ii., p. 19 ; quoted by Gibbon, chap, liii., p. 116, 
and note. 



176 MOHAMMED AND MOHAMMEDANISM, 

might have been evoked by a proposition of the great 
Emperors, Nicephorus and Zimisces, to give a martyr's 
crown to those who fell in battle with the infidels, was 
checkmated by a counter-proposition of the Patriarch to 
exclude from the highest rites of the Church all those 
who took up arms, even in self-defense.* Had it been 
otherwise, the period of the Crusades might have been 
anticipated by more than a hundred years. We see, 
therefore, that in the West, by the time that the tide of 
Arab conquest had spread from Mecca to Gibraltar, 
the spiritual power was independent of temporal, and 
was often able to control or neutralize its action, even 
in temporal affairs ; while in the East, on which the 
storm was first to burst, it was almost non-existent ; and 
if ever it did cause its voice to be heard, the cry it ut- 
tered was that of Phocion, not of Demosthenes — of 
Jeremiah, not of Isaiah : that of submission to the in- 
evitable, not of resistance to the bitter end. 

But with the Saracens the case was different. The 
God of Mohammed, like the God of the wanderers of 
the wilderness, and unlike the God of Christendom, 
was pre-eminently the God of battles. The early Mus- 
sulmans shed tears when held back within their leashes 
from the battle ; and the Emperor Leo, who condemned 

* See Gibbon, loc. cit. 



KALIPHS, SPIRITUAL AND TEMPORAL RULERS. Iff 

the Mohammedan idea of God, must have secretly en- 
vied the vigor that it brought. Military zeal under a 
tried leader is a strong passion, so is religious enthusi- 
asm ; and never probably in the history of the world 
have these two passions burned with so consuming a 
flame as they did in the breasts of the early followers 
of Mohammed. The civil, the religious, and the mili- 
tary were as indissolubly blended together in his sys- 
tem as they were in mediaeval chivalry. m It was not so 
much religion that became warlike, as war, the normal 
condition of the Arabs on a small scale, now itself 
became religious, with the whole world for its battle- 
ground. Probably in no army in the world, not even 
among the Scotch Covenanters, nor among Cromwell's 
Ironsides, did religious exercises so form part of the 
military discipline, and religious enthusiasm so infuse 
an esprit de corps. 

The early battles of Islam — Bedr and Ohud, Kadesia 
and Nehavend, the Termuk and Aiznadin ; its early 
sieges — Bozra and Damascus, Jerusalem and Aleppo, 
Memphis and Alexandria — are more than Homeric in 
the reckless valor and the chivalrous devotion that they 
exhibit. And it is to be remembered that they are in 
the main historical. Kaled is the Achilles of the siege 
of Damascus, Amrou of that of Memphis, Dames of 
Aleppo. At Bedr, Omeir, a mere stripling, who, fear- 

H2 



178 MOHAMMED AND MOHAMMEDANISM. 

ing that he might be rejected on account of his youth, 
had managed to join the small army of the Faithful 
unknown to Mohammed, flung away the dates he was 
eating with the vow that he would eat the next in the 
presence of God. " Paradise is before you, the devil 
and hell-fire in your rear," was the exhortation of the 
generals at the battle of Yermuk. The Faithful 
courted death with the ecstasy of martyrs, and re- 
ceived a martyr's reward. At Aiznadin, Derar main- 
tained a flying fight single-handed against thirty in- 
fidels, and killed seventeen of their number. At the 
siege of Damascus, a Saracen heroine, who had fol- 
lowed her husband, Aban, to the holy war, saw him 
killed by her side, stopped to bury him, and then 
fought on in the post of danger till she slew the fa- 
mous archer who had killed her husband. Nor is 
there any period in the history of Mohammedanism, 
late or early, in which the intensity of the crusading 
spirit does not on occasion manifest itself. It is God's 
battle that each Mussulman is fighting, and as God 
may will, he is ready for either event — for victory or 
defeat, for life or death. In the Crusades themselves, 
when Christendom seemed to be seized with a double 
portion of the Mohammedan spirit, by the confession 
of the Christians, the generosity, the reckless valor, the 
self-sacrifice, and the chivalry were not all on one side. 



RELIGIOUS AND MILITARY ENTHUSIASM. 179 

Richard of England and Frederick Barbarossa found 
their match in Saladin ; and even the history of En- 
gland's empire in India teems with proofs that the 
vital spark of fanaticism is latent only, not extinct. 

Whenever hitherto in the history of Mohammedan- 
ism the belief has grown feeble that the Faithful hold 
a commission from on high to put down evil, wherever 
it shows itself, with a strong hand, it must be admitted 
that the religion itself has proportionately failed to do 
its proper work, both as a compelling and as a restrain- 
ing power. In the Middle Ages the vitality and energy 
of Mohammedanism evidenced itself most clearly, not 
in Arabia or Persia or Africa, where its success was 
most complete, but in the Christian border lands — in 
Spain, in Palestine, in Asia Minor — where the crusading 
spirit was most evoked. Where there was no outlet for 
an active and even a material warfare, against what 
was believed to be evil, there corruption crept in, and 
stealthily paralyzed all the energies of Mussulman so- 
ciety. " Corrujptio optimi fit pessimal Ommiade 
and Abbasside and Fatimite Kaliphs ; Ghaznevide and 
Seljukian and Ottoman Sultans, passed through the 
same dreary stages of luxury and decay; and the gov- 
ernment that now represents, or misrepresents, the Kal- 
iphate, and is by most people foolishly supposed to be 
the main support of Islam, originally, in the hands of 



180 MOHAMMED AND MOHAMMEDANISM. 

men like Abu Bakr or Omar, the best, the simplest, 
and the most republican of all absolute governments, 
has, in the hands of the Ottoman Turks, ever since" 
their faith ceased to be militant, become the most 
hopeless of despotisms, since the abject submission 
to the ruler remains, while all reason for submission 
has vanished.* 

In the eyes of many the admission I have frankly 
made that the propagation of religion by the sword has 
been an essential part of Mohammedanism will serve to 
condemn it at once, and so in the abstract and from the 
highest point of view it ought. The sword is a rough 
surgical instrument in any case; but the doctrine that 
religion can ever be propagated by it, paradoxical as 
it sounds now, has seemed a truism in more ages than 
one; and though the Arabs were semi-barbarians, the 
conquered nations were constrained to admit that in 
their conquests they were not barbarous. Their wars 
were not mere wars of devastation, like those of Alaric 
or Genseric in earlier times, or of Zenghis Khan or 
Tamerlane in later. It was the savage boast of Attila, 
the genius of destruction, the "scourge of God," that 
the grass never grew where his horse had once trodden. 

* See this line of thought developed by Maurice, " Beligions of the 
World," p. 29, seq. I have done little more in this paragraph than con- 
dense and illustrate his argument. 



CHARACTER OF THE WARS OF ISLAM. 181 

But of the Mohammedan conquests it would rather be 
true to say that, after the first wave of invasion had 
swept by, two blades of grass were found growing 
where one had grown before ; like the thunderstorm, 
they fertilized while they destroyed ; and from one 
end of the then known world to the other, with their 
religion they sowed seeds of literature, of commerce, 
and of civilization. And as these disappeared, in the 
lapse of years, in one part of the Mussulman world, 
they reappeared in another. When they died out, w T ith 
the dying of the Abbasside Kaliphate, along the banks 
of the Tigris and Euphrates, they revived again on the 
Guadalquivir and Guadiana. To the splendors and civ- 
ilization of Damascus succeeded Bagdad ; to Bagdad, 
Cairo ; to Cairo, Cordova. 

Mohammedanism has been accused of hostility to the 
growth of the human intellect. It may have been so 
in its earliest days, w T hen Omar, as the st<jry goes, con- 
demned the Alexandrian Library to the flames by his 
famous dilemma : " If these books agree with the Book 
of God, they are useless ; if they disagree, they are per- 
nicious ; and in either case they must be destroyed." It 
may be so whenever there is a passing outburst of fa- 
naticism ; but it is not so in its essential nature, nor has 
it been so historically, not even in its wars. The relig- 
ion which has declared that " the ink of the learned is 



182 MOHAMMED AND MOHAMMEDANISM. 

as precious as the blood of the martyrs,"* and which 
declares that at the Day of Decision a special account 
will be given of the use made of the intellect, can not 
fairly be accused of obscurantism. It was not so when, 
during the darkest period of European history, the 
Arabs for five hundred years held up the torch of 
learning to humanity. It was the Arabs who then 
" called the Muses from their ancient seats ;" who col- 
lected and translated the writings of the Greek mas- 
ters ; who understood the geometry of Apollonius, and 
wielded the weapons found in the logical armory of 
Aristotle. It was the Arabs who developed the sciences 
of Agriculture and Astronomy, and created those of 
Algebra and Chemistry; who adorned their cities with 
colleges and libraries, as well as with mosques and pal- 
aces; who supplied Europe with a school of philoso- 
phers from Cordova, and a school of physicians from 

* Quoted by Gobineau, p. 26. So, too, Abulpharagius, in his " Dy- 
nasties," says that Almamun, Kaliph of Bagdad, invited learned men to 
his court because they were the elect of God, whose lives were devoted to 
the development of the mind. (See Gibbon, vol. vii., p. 34.) Against the 
destruction of the Alexandrian Library by Omar may fairly be set the de- 
struction by the Crusaders of an immense library at Tripoli, in Palestine. 
The general, finding that the .first room of the library contained the Ko- 
ran only, ordered the whole library to be burned. So, too, Cardinal Xime- 
nes, on entering the Moorish capital, showed that a crass fanaticism is 
not the prerogative of one religion only, by his order to destroy the vast 
collection of Arabic MSS. there, with the exception of three hundred 
medical works, which he reserved for his own university. 



RELIGIOUS WARS OF CHRISTIANS. 183 

Salerno. When we condemn the Mohammedan wars, 
let us at least remember what of good they brought 
with them. 

Nor is Mohammedanism the only religion which has 
tried to propagate itself by the sword. It is true, of 
course, that a holy war waged by Christians is in direct 
contravention of the spirit of their Founder, while one 
waged by Mohammedans is in accordance with both 
the practice and the precept of the Prophet, and so 
far there is no parallel at all between the two religions. 
The means authorized by Christ for the spread of his 
religion -were moral and spiritual only. The means au- 
thorized by Mohammed were persuasion and example 
first ; but, failing these, the sword. 

Yet, historically speaking, the contrast between the 
practice of Christians and Mohammedans has not been 
so sharp as is often supposed. The Saxon wars of 
Charles the Great were avowedly religious wars, and 
differed chiefly from the Syrian wars of Omar and of 
Ali, from the African wars of Amrou and Akbah, and 
the Spanish w r ars of Moussa and of Tarik, in that they 
were much more protracted and vastly less successful. 
Otto the Great, the best of Charles's successors, used 
the sword with vigor to extend the external profession 
of Christianity among the Sclavonian tribes who dwelt 
along the shores of the Baltic. The Mediaeval Papacy, 



184 MOHAMMED AND MOHAMMEDANISM. 

whatever its other services to progress, was never back- 
ward to unfurl the standard of a religious war, whether 
against the common enemy of Christendom, or, as more 
often happened, against a sect of heretics — the Albigen- 
ses or the Waldenses — nearer home. Nor,- in point of 
ferocity, is it clear that religious wars waged by Chris- 
tians will compare favorably with those of Mohammed- 
ans. The Mohammedan wars were never internecine. 
Even on the field of battle the conquering Mussulman 
allowed his conquered foe the two other alternatives 
of conversion or of tribute. When Abu Bakr first in- 
vaded Syria, he charged his troops not to mutilate the 
dead, not to slay old men, women, or children, not 
to cut down fruit-trees, not to kill cattle unless they 
were needed for food; and these humane precepts 
served like a code of laws of war during the career of 
Mohammedan conquest. And this, be it remembered, 
among Orientals, who had always been remarkable for 
their disregard of human life. When we remember, on 
the other hand, the massacre of four thousand five hun- 
dred pagan Saxons in cold blood by Charles the Great 
— when we remember the famous answer by which 
the Papal Legate, in the Albigensian war, quieted the 
scruples of a too conscientious general, "Kill all; God 
will know his own" — when we recall the Spanish In- 
quisition, the conquest of Mexico and Peru, the mas- 



WHAT WARS ARE CHRISTIAN? 185 

sacre of St. Bartholomew, and the sack of Magdeburg 
by Tilly, we shall be disposed, never, indeed, to justify 
religious wars, but to point out that, of the religious 
wars which the world has seen, the Mohammedan are 
certainly not the worst — in their object, in their meth- 
ods, or in their results. 

Nor is the extermination of moral evil in all cases an 
unworthy object of war. There are occasions even in 
our modern civilization, and in an era of non-interven- 
tion, when one longs to feel that the sword a nation 
wields may be, in their eyes at all events, the sword of 
the Lord and of Gideon. An unselfish war to put down 
the slave-trade or the opium-traffic, to counteract some 
" Holy Alliance " of emperors against the rights of 
peoples, to prevent a giant iniquity like the partition of 
Poland, is perhaps the only kind of war, except those 
of self-defense, to which the spirit of Christianity is not 
opposed. Christianity is opposed to wars of aggression, 
to dynastic wars, and, above all, to religious wars ; for a 
religious war rests upon the irreligious assumption that 
one fallible man holds a fiat from Omnipotence to step 
between another human soul and God ; and to enforce 
his partial views of truth upon a fellow-mortal, who, for 
aught he knows, may have as wide a prospect and as 
deep an insight as he has himself. "Deorum injuries 
Deis cuvobP The sword may silence ; it can not con- 



186 MOHAMMED AND MOHAMMEDANISM. 

vince: it may enforce hypocrisy; it can never force 
belief. But this has not always seemed so self-evident ; 
and I say it deliberately and with all the force of con- 
viction, compared with the war of the Confederate 
States in the nineteenth century for the perpetuation 
of slavery, compared with England's Japanese wars for 
the extension of her trade, her Chinese wars for the 
sale of her opium, and her miserable African wars 
waged for the possession of a territory which she 
bought, and had no moral right to buy, from those 
who sold what they had no moral right to sell,* the 
Mohammedan wars for the propagation of a compara- 
tively pure religion and a higher morality were, in their 
time and according to their light, inasmuch as they 
were not purely selfish, I do not say excusable, but 
they were at least intelligible and natural. 

Here I must close this Lecture. What of good and 
what of evil the world owes to Mohammed; what is 
the condition and what the prospects of Mohammedan- 
ism now ; what, as a matter of fact, is the historical 
connection between Mohammedanism and Christianity 
— its points of difference as well as of resemblance; 
finally, and most important of all, how that connection 
ought to be regarded by Christians, and under what 

* See Appendix to Lecture III. 



CONCLUSION OF LECTURE III. 187 

conditions or modifications the two great creeds may 
work together, or, if needs be, apart, for their common 
object, the general good of humanity — these are some 
of the points I hope to be able to discuss in my fourth 
and concluding Lecture. 



LECTURE IY. 



Maech 7, 1874. 



MOHAMMEDANISM AND CHRISTIANITY. 

Say unto the Christians, their God and my God is one. — The Koran. 

'O da 'Irjdovg dirt, M/} kcjXvsts avrov ' og yap ovk sgti Ka& r)fjiujv, vTzkp 
rjiJLiov ioTiv. — St. Mark. 

It may have been observed that in attempting, in my 
last Lecture, to deal with some of the questions con- 
nected with Mohammedanism — such as miracles, fatal- 
ism, religions wars — which have much perplexed the 
Christian mind, I omitted to say any thing on a point 
which, more even than any of these, has scandalized 
those who view Mohammedanism from a distance: I 
mean the notions Mohammedans have formed of a -fut- 
ure state. The omission was not altogether accidental, 
for I am inclined to think that too much stress has been 
laid upon these notions, no less by Mohammed's apolo- 
gists than by his critics ; more stress than the Koran 
itself, and more even than the current Mohammedan 
belief, will warrant. But, remembering a remark of 



THE FUTURE LIFE OF ISLAM. Ig9 

Sprenger's* that, although Islam has been described in 
many books, yet educated people have not got much 
farther in the knowledge of it than that the Turks are 
Mohammedans and allow polygamy, I think it will be 
well to add a few words to counteract the common no- 
tion, which I should be disposed to place on a par with 
this, that the Paradise of the Mohammedans is nothing 
more than the enjoyment of polygamy, with its earthly 
drawbacks and limitations removed. 

So much has been said and written about the gross 
nature of Mohammed's Paradise, the black-eyed Houris, 
the perfumes and the spices, with which his imagination 
furnished it, that ordinary people may be excused for 
believing that it was mainly, if not wholly, sensual. But 
this is not, in the main, a true, and still less is it an ade- 
quate, account of the matter. The passages are few in 
number in which Mohammed dwells much on these as- 
pects of the future, and, even in these, much of what is 
said is explained by orthodox Mohammedans to be mere- 
ly Oriental imagery, while some of it is especially suit- 
able — the bubbling fountains and the shady gardens 
above all — to the inhabitants of a dry and thirsty land, 
such as Arabia is.f 

* Sprenger, vol. ii., p. 18. 

t See Sale's " Introduction," p. 73 ; and Lane's " Modern Egyptians," 
vol. i., p. 84. 



190 MOHAMMED AND MOHAMMEDANISM. 

Few people now put a literal interpretation upon the 
gorgeous imagery and the glowing colors used in the 
Book of Eevelation to describe the Celestial City; and 
every one will admit that in all religions, even the most 
spiritual, the circumstances of this life must necessarily, 
to some extent, lend both form and color to the views 
of the life to come. The Red Indian dreams of a heav- 
en behind the cloud-topped hills, embosomed in woods, 
wherein his faithful dog will bear him company. The 
fierce Norseman hoped to be admitted after death to the 
Hall of Odin, and there, reclining on a couch, to drink 
ale forever from the skulls of his enemies whom he had 
slain in battle. The earnest Methodist pictures to him- 
self a place 

1 'Where congregations ne'er break up, 
And Sabbaths never end," 

for the simple reason that he finds his highest spiritual 
happiness in these things on earth. A polygamous peo- 
ple could hardly have pictured to themselves a heaven 
without polygamy. It would never even have occurred 
to them that such a thing was possible, since few of them 
had ever known a society on earth which was without 
it ; n«£ do I suppose that any individual Christian who 
has ever known the luxury of home affection has been 
able to accept in any literal sense the doctrine that in 
the future world there are to be no exclusive attach- 



FUTURE LIFE OF MOHAMMEDANS. \§\ 

ments,* for the simple reason, again, that without in- 
dividual love no human heart can conceive of the pos- 
sibility of any happiness as complete or real. 

Again, it is to t>e remembered that much that is ma- 
terial or even gross in the Mohammedan conception of 
a future life is due, not to Mohammed, but to Moham- 
med's successors ; and it is not the least of the enigmas 
that attach to the extraordinary and unique character of 
the Prophet that his views of a future state are never 
more spiritual than at the time when, according to the 
common theory, he had most entirely, and, in fact, he 
had to some extent, fallen away from his austerely moral 
life. Contrast the tone of the Suras, referring to this 
subject, which were written at Mecca early in his life,f 
with the third, for instance, which was written at Medina 
many years later. 

" Fair," says he, " in the sight of men are the pleasures 
of women and children ; fair are the treasured treasures 
of gold and silver; and fine horses; and flocks; and 
corn-fields ! Such is the enjoyment of this world's life. 
But God ! goodly is the home with him ! 

" Shall I tell you of better things than these, prepared 
for those who fear God in his presence ? Theirs shall 
be gardens beneath which the rivers flow, and in which 

* St. Matt, xxii.,30. 

f Sura lv., 44-58; lvi., 17-36; lxxvi., 12-22. 



192 MOHAMMED AND MOHAMMEDANISM. 

they shall abide for aye, and wives of stainless purity, 
and acceptance with God, for God regardeth his servants. 

" They w T ho say, O our Lord, we have indeed believed, 
pardon our sins, and keep us from the torment of the 
fire. 

" The patient are they and the truthful, the lowly 
and the charitable, and they who ask for pardon as 
each day breaks."* 

Surely here, as elsewhere, and increasingly so as the 
Prophet drew near his end, it is the presence of God, 
the knowledge of him, the eternal Salaam or Peace 
with which they shall salute one another, the purity of 
love, and not its sensuality, which are the most promi- 
nent ideas. 

Heaven and hell, indeed, were realities to the Moham- 
medan mind in a sense in which they have hardly ever 
been to any other nation. With a more than Dantesque 
realism, Mohammed saw the tortures of the lost no less 
than the bliss of the faithful. 

" They shall dwell," he says, " amid burning winds 
and in scalding water, under the shade of a black smoke 
which is no shade, neither cool nor grateful, . . . and 
they shall surely eat of the fruit of the tree Ez-Zak- 
koum, and shall fill their bellies therewith, and they 

* Sura xiii., 12-15. 



REALITY OF FUTURE LIFE TO MOHAMMED, 1Q3 

shall drink thereon boiling water, even as a thirsty 
camel drinketh." * 

And again he says : 

" They shall have garments of fire fitted unto them, 
their bowels shall be dissolved thereby, and also their 
skins, and they shall be beaten with maces of iron." f 

And once more, in one of his very early Suras, which, 
if it is memorable for nothing else, is memorable for its 
superb audacity, when we recollect that as yet Moham- 
med's prophetic claims were treated only with contempt- 
uous indifference, and he himself was a mere outcast : 

" Woe be," he says, " on that day to those who accused 
the prophets of imposture ! 

"It shall be said unto them, Go ye into that which 
ye denied as a falsehood. 

" Go ye into the shadow of the smoke of hell, which, 
though it ascend in three columns, 

" Shall not shade you from the heat, neither shall it 
be of service against the flames ; 

" But it shall cast forth sparks as big as towers, 

" And their color shall be like unto that of red camels. 

"Woe be on that day unto those who accuse the 
prophets of imposture." % 

* Sura lvi., 41-56. f Sura xxii., 20-21. 

X Sura lxxvii , 29, to end. The " Woe be," etc., is a refrain which re- 
curs ten times in the Sura. 



194: MOHAMMED AND MOHAMMEDANISM. 

" What shall be our reward," asked his earliest fol- 
lowers of Mohammed, " if we fall in battle V ' " Para- 
dise/' said the Prophet, without the slightest hesitation. 
In the war of Tabuk his men demurred to marching be- 
cause it was harvest-time. " Your harvest, it lasts for a 
day," said Mohammed ; " what will come of your harvest 
through all eternity ?" They complained of the burn- 
ing sun. " Hell is hotter," said the Prophet, and on 
they went* 

That it was desirable to dwell with so much persist- 
ence upon the enormous issues involved as regards the 
future life, in every act and thought of this, I am far 
from asserting ; since self-interest, however enlightened 
and however refined, however even spiritualized it may 
be, is self-interest still. But at all events it was stern 
reality to Mohammed and to his followers. The future 
was all as real and as instant to him as it was to the 
Apostles when, expecting, as they did, from the inter- 
pretation they put upon Christ's words, to see him in 
their own lifetime coming in the clouds of heaven, they 
droye home their warnings by bidding men flee from 
" the wrath to come." In every successive crisis of the 
Christian Church it has been the belief of Christians 



* Carlyle's " Heroes," p. 239; and Sura ix., 82, etc. In this expedi- 
tion water was so scarce that the fainting troops were obliged to kill the 
camels and drink the water out of their stomachs. 



LEGITIMATE INFLUENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE. 195 

that the darkest hour is that before the dawn, and it has 
been used, however mistakenly, yet with effect and with 
sincerity, to comfort the depressed, to awaken the sleep- 
ing, and to arouse the dead. " Finem suum mundus 
jam non nunciat solum, sed ostendit" says St. Gregory 
amid the devastations of the Lombards. " Approjnn- 
quante jam mundi termino" is the heading of even 
legal documents amid the deeper depression of the tenth 
century caused by the ravages of the Hungarians by 
land and the Norsemen by sea. This is the burden of 
St. Bernard's hymns, of Savonarola's preachings, of Ban- 
yan's allegories. Truly, if Mohammed sinned at all in 
this respect, he sinned in good company. 

But the future world, ever present though it was to 
the minds of the early Mohammedans, did not supply 
the motive by which they were really inspired. A 
selfish hope of heaven and a slavish fear of hell may 
act as a " negative stimulus" — may possibly teach pas- 
sive'' resistance to temptation; but it does not nerve the 
arm to strike or quicken the eye to see. Perhaps, in- 
deed, the highest heroism of all, that which consists in 
absolute conscious self-sacrifice or self-annihilation for 
the good of others — the heroism of the ideal just man 
in the second book of Plato's " Eepublic ;" the heroism 
of Moses when he prayed to be blotted out of the Book 
that God had written; the heroism of a greater than 



196 MOHAMMED AND MOHAMMEDANISM. 

Moses when He died upon the cross— is impossible to 
those who believe firmly in a future life, the happiness 
or misery of which is to be exactly determined by the 
life here. But there may be true heroism even short of 
the truest; and all true heroism, even if it can not deny 
or forget its reward, is stimulated not so much by the 
reward as by the difficulty of obtaining it. The reward, 
to use an Aristotelian phrase, is an t7nyiyv6iusv6v rt t£- 
\oq, something thrown in — an after-thought and acces- 
sory merely; and this is what a future life was to the 
primitive w r arriors of the Crescent. 

Nor is it true, in any sense of the w T ord, that Moham- 
med's is an easy or sensual religion. With its frequent 
fasts, its five prayers a day, its solitudes, its almsgivings, 
its pilgrimages, even in the tortures of Indian fakirs 
and the bowlings of Mecca dervishes, which are the 
abuse, and not the use, of the religion — it certainly 
does not appeal much to the laziness or the sensuality 
or the selfishness of mankind. 

In his capacity even of temporal ruler, Mohammed 
rarely gave material rewards to his followers. Abu 
Bakr, Ali, Omar, Hamza, when in his early days they 
ranged themselves as friends around the then friendless 
enthusiast, sacrificed, as it must have appeared to them, 
all their worldly hopes ; they little thought that they 
were enrolling themselves in that most select band of 



THE HELPERS OF MEDINA. 197 

heroes who may be said to have made History. On 
one occasion, late in his life, Mohammed did give some 
material rewards to recent and perhaps half-hearted 
converts, but the exception only proved the rule, and 
that in the most memorable manner. The Helpers of 
Medina were naturally dissatisfied, but Mohammed re- 
called them to their allegiance by words which went 
straight from his heart to theirs: that he had given 
things of the world to those who cared for such things, 
but to them he had given himself. Others returned 
home with sheep and camels, the Helpers with the 
Prophet of God. Verily, if all the men of the earth 
went one way, and the Helpers of Medina another, he 
would go the way of the Helpers of Medina.* The 
Helpers burst into tears, and exclaimed that they were 
more than satisfied with what he had given them. And, 
just before his death, Mohammed commended these 
same Helpers of Medina to the protection of the exiles 
who had accompanied him from Mecca. "Hold in 
honor," said he, " the Helpers of Medina ; the number 
of believers may increase, but that of the Helpers never 
can.f They were my family, and with them I found 

* Alluded to in Sura lix., 8, 9 ; viii , 42. See Muir, vol. iv., p. 151-154. 

f Cf. Herodotus, iii., 119: w (3acri\ev, avr\p jikv fxoi av c'iWog yevoiro, 
el SaifKov e$s\oi, icai tskvci dXXa, el ravra a7rof5d\oLfxi ' warpbg 3k Kai 
/unrpbg ovk en fiev Z,to6vriov adeXtyebg av aWog ovdevl Tpoirtp yevoiro. 
Cf. also Soph., Antigone, 909-912. 



198 MOHAMMED AND MOHAMMEDANISM. 

a home ; do good to those who do good to them, and 
break friendship with those who are hostile to them." 

Perhaps there is no remark one has heard more often 
about Mohammedanism than that it was so successful 
because it was so sensual ; but there is none more desti- 
tute of truth, as if any religion could owe its permanent 
success to its bad morality ! 1 do not say that its mo- 
rality is perfect, or equal to the Christian morality. Mo- 
hammed did not make the manners of Arabia, and he 
was too wise to think that he could either unmake or 
remake them all at once. Solon remarked of his own 
legislation that his laws were not the best that he could 
devise, but that they were the best the Athenians could 
receive ; and his defense has generally been accepted as 
a sound one. Moses took the institutions of a primitive 
society as he found them — the patriarchal power, inter- 
necine war, blood feuds, the right of asylum, polygamy, 
and slavery — and did not abolish any one of them; he 
only mitigated their worst evils, and so unconsciously 
prepared the way in some cases for their greater per- 
manence, in others for their eventual extinction. 

In like manner the religion of Christ did not sweep 
into oblivion any national or political institutions. He 
contented himself with planting principles in the hearts 
of his followers which would, when the time was ripe 
for it, work out their abolition. Willing to sow if oth- 



ATTITUDE TOWARD EXISTING INSTITUTIONS. 199 

era could reap, to labor if others could enter into his 
labors, he cast into the ground the grain of mustard- 
seed, and was content, with the eye of faith alone, to 
see it grow into the mighty tree whose branches should 
overspread the world, and whose leaves should be for 
the healing of the nations. With sublime self-restraint 
and self-sacrifice, governed by his thought for the bound- 
less possibilities of the future of his Church, rather than 
by the impulse of the moment, he forbore to denounce 
in so many words the inveterate evils of the Roman 
Empire, which must have gone to his soul's soul —for- 
eign conquest, tyranny, the amphitheatre, slavery. He 
even used words which have been wrongly construed to 
mean that at all times passive obedience is a duty, and 
that the people have nothing to do with the laws but 
to obey them. Nor has the Christian Church — sections 
of which have for strange and various, but intelligi- 
ble, reasons canonized a Constantine and a Vladimir, a 
Cyril and a Charles the Great, a Dunstan and a Becket 
— ever attached the name of Saint to some who, in the 
fullness of time, have carried oitt far more fully and in 
spirit Christ's work, albeit in seeming contradiction to 
the letter of the law which inculcated submission to 
existing powers and institutions — to a Telemachus or 
a Theodoric, to an Alfred or a Wilberforce. And yet 
no Christian will deny that the monk Telemachus, who 



200 MOHAMMED AND MOHAMMEDANISM. 

threw liimself between the swords of the gladiators, 
and, braving the fury of the spectators athirst for blood, 
accomplished by his death what his life could never 
have won, did a deed which all the "Acta Sanctorum 55 
could be searched to parallel. 

Now Mohammed was a legislator and a statesman, 
as w r ell as the founder of a religion; and why is the 
defense which we allow to Solon, and the praise we be- 
stow upon the limited scope of the Mosaic legislation, 
denied to Islam ? 

Polygamy is, indeed, next to caste, the most blighting 
institution to which a nation can become a prey. It 
pollutes society at the fountain-head, for the family is 
the source of all political and of all social virtues. Mo- 
hammed would have more than doubled the debt of 
gratitude the Eastern world owes to him had he swept 
it away ; but he could not have done so, even if he had 
fully seen its evils. It is not fair to represent polyg- 
amy as a part of Mohammedanism any more than it 
is fair to represent slavery as a part of Christianity. 
The one co-exists with the other without being mixed 
w 7 ith it, even as the muddy Arve and the clear Rhone 
keep their currents distinct long after they have been 
united in one river-bed. Perhaps it is strange that they 
ever could have co-existed, even for a day ; but we have 
to deal with facts as they are ; and it is a fact that 



TREATMENT OF WOMEN. 201 

slavery has co-existed with Christianity — nay, has pro- 
fessed to justify itself by Christianity — even till this 
nineteenth century. Mohammed could not have made a 
tabula rasa of Eastern society, but what he could do he 
did. He at least put strict limitations on the unbounded 
license of Eastern polygamy* and the facility of East- 
ern divorce.f If the two social touchstones of a relig- 
ion are the way in which, relatively to the time, it deals 
with the weaker sex, and the way in which it regards 
the poor and the oppressed, Mohammed's religion can 
stand the test.:}: He improved the condition of women 
by freeing them from the arbitrary patriarchal power 
of the parents or the heirs of their husbands, by incul- 
cating just and kind treatment of them by their hus- 
bands themselves, by giving them legal rights in case 
of unfair treatment, and by absolutely prohibiting the 

* Sura iv., 3, etc. 

f Sura iv., 39 and 127 ; xxxiii., 48, 52, etc. 

% Among many other illustrations of this see (a) the oath taken early 
in his life with other Koreishites, " to defend the oppressed so long as a 
drop of water remained in the ocean," an act the remembrance of which 
Mohammed said " he would not exchange for the choicest camel in 
Arabia;" (b) the account given by Jafar to the Najashy of Abyssinia of 
the change wrought by Mohammed among his followers ; perhaps the 
noblest and truest summary we have of the moral teaching of the Prophet ; 
(c) the pledge of Acaba, A.D. 621, taken by his first converts from Me- 
dina; (d) Sura ii., 170 : "There is no piety in turning your faces toward 
the East or the West, but he is pious who believeth in God ; . . . who for 
the love of God distributed his wealth to his kindred, and to the orphans, 
and the needy, and the wayfarer." 

12 



202 MOHAMMED AND MOHAMMEDANISM. 

incestuous marriages which were rife in the times of 
ignorance, and the still more horrible practice of the 
burying alive of female infants.* Nor was this all, for 
besides imposing restrictions on polygamy, by his severe 
laws at first, and by the strong moral sentiment aroused 
by these laws afterward, he has succeeded, down to 
this very day, and to a greater extent than has ever 
been the case elsewhere, in freeing all Mohammedan 
countries from those professional outcasts who live by 
their own misery, and, by their existence as a recognized 
class, are a standing reproach to every member of the 
society of which they form a part. 

Mohammed did not abolish slavery altogether, for in 
that condition of society it would have been neither 
possible nor desirable to do so ; but he encouraged the 
emancipation of slaves ; he laid down the principle that 
every slave that embraced Islam should be vpso facto 
free, and, what is more important, he took care that no 
stigma should attach to the emancipated slave in conse- 
quence of his honest and honorable life of labor. In 
Islam the emancipated slave is actually, as well as po- 
tentially, equal to a free-born citizen, and he often rises 
to one of the highest posts in the empire, f As to those 

* Suravi., 138,141,152. 

t Zeid, the freedman of the Prophet, often took the command in war. 
Captain Burton mentions ("Pilgrimage," vol. i., p. 89) that the pacha 



TREATMENT OF SLAVES AND ORPHANS, 203 

who continued slaves, he prescribed kindness and con- 
sideration in dealing with theni.* " See," he said, in his 
parting address at Mina, the year before his death — " see 
that ye feed them with such food as ye eat yourselves, 
and clothe them with the stuff ye yourselves wear ; for 
they are the servants of the Lord, and are not to be tor- 
mented." The equality of all men before God was a 
principle which Mohammed every where maintained ; 
and which, taking, as it did, all caste feeling from slav- 
ery, took away also its chief sting. To Mohammed's 
mind labor could never be degrading, and the domestic 
slavery of the Arabs, under which, thanks to him, par- 
ents were never to be separated from their children, nor 
indeed relations from each other at all, though always 
to be condemned in the abstract, became, under the 
Prophet's hands, a bond closer and more lasting, and 
hardly more liable to abuse, than domestic service else- 
where. 

The orphan, too, is the subject of his peculiar care, 
for he had been an orphan himself ; and what God 



of the Syrian caravan with which he traveled to Damascus had been the 
slave of a slave. Sebuktegin, the father of the magnificent Mahmoud, 
and founder of the Ghaznevide dynasty, was a slave ; so was Kutb-ud-din, 
the conqueror and first king of Delhi, and the true founder, therefore, of 
the Mohammedan Empire in India. (See Elphinstone's " India," p. 320, 
363, 370.) 

* Sura xxiv., 34, 57. 



204 MOHAMMED AND MOHAMMEDANISM. 

m 

had done for him, he was anxious, as far as might be, 
to-do for others.* The poor were always present with 
him, and their condition never absent from his mind. 
In one of his early Suras, " the steep," as he calls it — 
that is to say, the straight and narrow way — is said to be 
to release the captive, to give food to the poor that lieth 
in the dust, and to stir up one another to steadfastness 
and compassion.f And in another Sura, Jews and 
Arabs are alike warned in their exclusive pride in their 
common progenitor, Abraham, that verily the nearest of 
kin to Abraham are they who follow him in his works.J 
Nor does Mohammed omit to lay stress on what I 
venture to think is as crucial a test of a moral code, 
and even of a religion, as is the treatment of the poor 
and the weak — I mean the duties we owe to what we 
call the low r er animals. There is no religion which has 
taken a higher view of animal life in its authoritative 
documents, and none wherein the precept has been so 
much honored by its practical observance. " There is 
no beast on earth," says the Koran,§ " nor bird which 
flieth with its wings, but the same is a people like unto 
you — unto the Lord shall they return ;" and it is the 
current belief that animals w T ill share with men the 



* Sura viii., 42, and xciii., 6, to end. 
f Sura xc, 12, 15, and passim. 
X Sura iii., 61. § Sura vi., 38, and Sale's note ad he. 



THE POOR AND AMIMALS. 205 

general resurrection, and be judged according to their 
works. At the slaughter of an animal, the Prophet 
ordered that God should always be named, but the 
words " the Compassionate, the Merciful," were to be 
omitted ; for on the one hand such an expression 
seemed a mockery to the sufferer, and, on the other, 
he could not bring himself to believe that the de- 
struction of any life, however necessary, could be alto- 
gether pleasing to the All Merciful. " In the name of 
God," says a pious Mussulman, before he strikes the 
fatal blow — "God is most great; God give thee patience 
to endure the affliction w^hich he hath allotted thee !"* 
In the East there has been no moralist like Bentham to 
insist in noble words on the extension of the sphere of 
morality to all sentient beings, and to be ridiculed for it 
by people who call themselves religious ; there has been 
no naturalist like Darwin to demonstrate by his marvel- 
ous powers of observation how large a part of the men- 
tal and moral faculties which we usually claim for our- 
selves alone we share with other beings ; there has been 
no Oriental " Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to 
Animals ;" but one reason of this is not far to seek. 
What the legislation of the last few years has at length 
attempted to do, and, from the mere fact that it is legis- 

* Lane's " Modern Egyptians," vol. i., p. 119. 



206 MOHAMMED AND MOHAMMEDANISM. 

lation, must do ineffectually, has been long effected in 
the East by the moral and religious sentiment which, 
like almost every thing that is good in that part of the 
world, can be traced back, in part at least, to the great 
Prophet of Arabia.* In the East, so far as it has not 
been hardened by the West, there is a real sympathy 
between man and the domestic animals ; they under- 
stand one another, and the cruelties which the most 
humane of our countrymen unconsciously inflict in 
the habitual use, for instance, of the muzzle or the 
bearing-rein on the most docile, the most patient, the 
most faithful, and the most intelligent of their com- 
panions, are impossible in the East. An Arab can 
not ill-treat his horse ; and Lane bears emphatic tes- 
timony to the fact that in his long residence in Egypt 
he never saw an ass or a dog (though the latter is 
there looked upon as an unclean animal) treated with 



* The sympathy of the Prophet for his domestic animals is well known. 
There is a great variety of traditions respecting his horses, his mules, his 
milch and riding camels, and his goats. It would be easy to write a com- 
plete biography of his favorite she-camel, Al Kaswa. Her eccentricities 
and perversities exercised an influence on some critical occasions in the 
Prophet's life — e. g., on his entrance to Medina, and at Kodeiba. Among 
the phenomena attending Mohammed's fits, it is recorded that if one came 
on him while riding, his camel itself became first wildly excited, and then 
fixed and rigid ! And I have little doubt that the story arose from the 
almost electric sympathy that exists between an intelligent animal that is 
kindlv treated and its master. 



HOW SHOULD CHRISTIANS REGARD ISLAM? 207 

cruelty, except in those cities which were overrun by 
Europeans.* 

By absolutely prohibiting gambling and intoxicating 
liquors, Mohammed did much to abolish, once and for 
all, over the vast regions that own his sway, two of the 
worst and most irremediable evils of European society : 
evils to the intensity of which the Christian govern- 
ments of the nineteenth century are hardly yet begin- 
ning to awake.f Can any one then deny what I have 
already hinted above, that, looking at him merely as a 
moral reformer, and apart from his great religious rev- 
olution, Mohammed was really doing Christ's work, even 
if he had reverenced Christ less than in fact he did ? 

And this brings ilie to the most important question 
that I shall touch upon in this Lecture ; and one but 
for which, in its various bearings, I do not know that I 
should have written these Lectures : I mean the attitude 
that Christianity ought to bear to Mohammedanism now. 
To say that in spite of the theoretic intolerance of Mo- 
hammedanism, it ought, unless its theory is put into 
practice, itself to be tolerated, is happily now a mere 
truism. But it ought not to be treated with a merely 
contemptuous or distant recognition, or to be inserted 
tanquam ivfamicB causa — " Jews, Turks, Infidels, and 

* Lane, vol. i., p. 359-361. t Sura v., 92. 



208 MOHAMMED AND MOHAMMEDANISM. 

Heretics" — in a collect, once a year, upon that day of 
all others upon which the universality of Christ's self- 
sacrifice is brought before us. When the draft of a 
treaty was brought to the General of the armies of rev- 
olutionary France, the first clause of which contained a 
formal recognition by the Emperor Francis of Austria— 
the representative of legitimacy, absolutism, and divine 
right — of the existence of the French Republic, " Strike 
that clause out," said Napoleon ; "the French Republic 
needs no recognition from him — it is as clear as the sun 
at noonday." Mohammedanism needs no formal recog- 
nition of its existence by a faith with which it has so 
much in common. The immemorial quarrel between 
Mohammedanism and Christianity is, after all, a quar- 
rel between near relations ; and, like most immemorial 
quarrels, is based chiefly on mutual misunderstandings. 
Without any appearance of extraordinary condescen- 
sion, we should recognize the fact which Mohammed- 
ans themselves might at present certainly be inclined 
to deny, that Islam is the nearest approach to Christian- 
ity — I would almost call it, remembering Mohammed's 
intense reverence for Christ, the only form of Christian- 
ity — which has proved itself suited to the nations of the 
East. Even Dante placed Mohammed in the " Inferno," 
not as a heathen, but as a heretic ; and is there any 
reason who our notion of Christianity should be less 
comprehensive than his ? 



THREE MONOTHEISTIC CREEDS. 209 

Mohammedanism is the one religion in the world, be- 
sides our own and the Jewish, which is strictly and 
avowedly Monotheistic. " Dispute not," said Moham- 
med to his followers, " against those who have received 
the Scriptures, that is, Jew T s and Christians, except with 
gentleness ; but say unto them we believe in the reve- 
lation which hath been sent down to us, and also in that 
which hath been sent down to you ; and our God and 
your God is one."* And again he says in another 
place, "Verily the Believers, and those w T ho are Jews, 
those w T ho are Christians and Sabeans, whoever be- 
lieveth in God, and the last day, and doeth that which 
is right, they shall have their reward with their Lord — 
there shall come no fear upon them, neither shall they 
be grieved."f The three creeds are branches from the 
same parent stock, not different stocks ; and they all 
alike look back to the majestic character of Abraham 

* Sura v. , 73. 

t Sura ii., 59. There is a still more striking passage in v., 52-53 : 
" Unto every one have we given a law and a way. Now if God had 
pleased, he would surely have made you one people, but he hath made 
you to differ that he might try you in that which he hath given to each, 
therefore strive to excel each other in good works. Unto God shall ye 
all return, and he will tell you that concerning which ye have disagreed. " 
— Cf. Acts x., 35. These are passages on which the comparative mythol- 
ogist, the Mussulman reformer, and the Christian missionary would alike 
do well to. dwell. It is noteworthy also that the fifth Sura, from which 
two of them come, is placed by Rodwell and others last in the chronolog- 
ical order. 



210 MOHAMMED AND MOHAMMEDANISM. 

as the first teacher of the unity of God. Mohammed 
says, again and again, that the belief he inculcates is 
no new belief — it is the original creed of El-Khalil 
Allah, the Friend of God. The heroes of the Old 
Testament history, Isaac and Jacob, Joseph and Joshua, 
David and Solomon, are heroes of the Mohammedan 
religion as well as of the Jewish and Christian. 

I remarked in my second Lecture that Mohammed 
may have thought himself justified in breaking the 
moral law he himself imposed, because a somewhat 
similar concession had been made to Moses. This is 
not a mere conjecture on my part, for it is certain that 
Mohammed had, for one who was so careless of facts, 
acquired somehow a full and fairly accurate knowledge 
of the history of the great Lawgiver. He relates it at 
length,* and recurs to it with a passionate fondness 
from an early period in his career, evidently dwelling 
mentally on the striking parallels between himself and 
Moses, the shepherd life, the call to the Prophet's office, 
the rejection by their own countrymen, no less than — be 
it always remembered to Mohammed's credit that he 
does not disguise it — the main point of difference, 
the prodigality of miracles performed by the one, and 
the inability to work them in the other. One most sa- 



* c 



See 



especially Suras vii., xviii., xxvii., xxviii., Iv. 



SPIRITUALITY OF ISLAM. 211 

cred spot actually connects the two Prophets together. 
There is a tradition, to some extent authenticated, that 
Mohammed drove the camels of Kadijah to the very 
place where Moses had tended the flocks of Jethro. 
Moses and Mohammed may have reposed on the same 
rock, watered their cattle at the same springs, looked 
upon the same weird mountains.* And it is a redeem- 
ing point, perhaps the only redeeming point, in the 
melancholy history of St. Catharine's Monastery, that 
from age to age, within the convent walls, mosque and 
church have stood side by side, and Mussulmans and 
Christians have knelt together worshiping the same 
God ; and there, if only there in the world, venerating 
with a kindred, if not with an equal reverence, the 
same prophets, Moses and Mohammed, and One who 
is infinitely greater than them both.f 

Again, Mohammedanism is essentially a spiritual re- 
ligion. As instituted by Mohammed it had "no priest 
and no sacrifice ?\ in other words, no caste of sacri- 

* Sura ii., 57; vii.,160. 

f See the account of St. Catharine's and its degradation in " The Des- 
ert of the Exodus,' - ' by E. H. Palmer ; and in Stanley's " Sinai and Pal- 
estine," p. 53,54. It is said that at Nijni Novgorod the same phenome- 
non, mosque and church as near and not unfriendly neighbors, may be 
observed ; but there no doubt it is commerce rather than religious sym- 
pathy which we have to thank for it. 

X The sacrifice at the Annual Pilgrimage is a mere relic of the Pagan 
practice ; it has little religious significance, and does not imply priest- 



212 MOHAMMED AND MOHAMMEDANISM. 

— ficing priests were ever to be allowed to come between 
the human soul and God: forbidding the representation 
of all living things alike, whether as objects of use or of 
admiration, of veneration or of worship, Mohammedan- 
ism is more opposed to idolatry even than we are our- 
selves. Mohammed hated images more sternly even 
than the Iconoclasts of Constantinople or the soldiers of 
Cromwell. Every mosque in the world of Islam bears 
witness to this. Statuary and pictures being forbidden, 
variegated marbles, and festoons of lamps, and geomet- 
ric shapes, and tortuous inscriptions from the Koran 
have to supply their place as best they can, and form 
that peculiar species of ornamentation, strictly confined 
to the inanimate w T orld, which we call Arabesque ; and 
which is still to be traced in the architecture of so 
many churches and so many mosques along the frontier 
line of four thousand miles which divides the realm of 
the Crescent from that of the Cross.* 

craft ; it indicates only the belief that sin deserves death. In orthodox 
Mohammedanism there is no priestly caste, and therefore no fictions of 
apostolical succession, inherent sanctity, indissoluble vows, or powers of 
absolution. See Palgrave's " Essays," p. 82. 

* Cf. Stanley's "Lectures on the Eastern Church," p. 273., Without 
discussing the general question at length, I may remark here that Gothic 
architecture, though it is not very ready to acknowledge the debt, owes 
much to Moorish architecture — in particular the Horse-shoe or Crescent 
Arch. The pointed arch itself is to be found in many early mosques, 
and some of the most famous Venetian buildings, St. Mark's among them, 
owe much to Saracenic architecture. 



REVERENCE FOR CHRIST. 213 

This hatred of idolatry has been found even among 
the most uncivilized followers of the Prophet. The 
gorgeous ritual, the gaudy pictures, and the pious frauds 
which play so large a part in the conversion of the 
Sclavonian nations to Christianity seem only to have 
alienated these semi-barbarians. Mahmoud, the Ghaz- 
nevicle, the son of a slave and the conqueror of Hindoo- 
stan, was offered a sum of ten millions sterling if only 
he would spare the famous idol in the pagoda of Sora- 
nat. Avarice is said to have been his besetting fault, 
but he replied in the memorable words, " Never shall 
Mahinoud be handed down to posterity as an idol sell- 
er, rather than an idol destroyer;" and broke it into 
pieces.* 

Finally : Mohammedanism, in spite of centuries of 
wars and misunderstandings, looks back upon the 
Founder of our religion with reverence only less than 
that with which the most devout Christians regard 
him. 

So far from its being true, as is commonly supposed, 
that Mohammedans regard Christ as Christians have 
too often regarded Mohammed, with hatred and with 
contempt, Sir William Muir remarks that devout Mus- 
sulmans never mention the name of Seyyedna Eesa, or 

* Ferishta's "History of Mohammedan Power in India" (Briggs's 
translation), vol. i., p. 72 ; and Elphinstone's "History of India," p. 386. 



214 MOHAMMED AND MOHAMMEDANISM. 

Our Lord Jesus, without adding the words " on whom 
be peace." The highest honor that a Mussulman can 
conceive is given to Christ in the grave reserved for 
him by the side of the Prophet himself in the great 
mosque at Medina. Mohammedans expect that he will 
one day return to earth, and having slain Antichrist, 
will establish perfect peace among men. And Mr. 
Hunter* tells us that the Indian Sheeahs avowedly 
look forward to his reappearance simultaneously witli 
that of the last of their twelve Imams, and to an amal- 
gamation of the two creeds : of Islam as the followers 
of Ali hold it, and of Christianity, not as it is, but as 
they believe it was taught by Christ himself, f 

If it be asked, why then did Mohammed not ac- 
cept Christianity, I apprehend that the reasons are 
threefold ; and that it appears, from the chronolog- 
ical order lately assigned to the Suras of the Koran, 
that at one period, that of the Fatrah, Mohammed 
did consider whether first Judaism, and secondly Chris- 
tianity, as he knew it, contained the message he had to 
give. 

I. The first explanation I would suggest is, that the 
Christ known to him was the Christ, not of the Bible, 

* " Our Indian Mussulmans," p. 120, by W.W. Hunter. 
f For a curious discussion on the return of the Messiah to earth held at 
Timbuctoo, see Barth's " Travels in Central Africa," vol. v., p. 4. 



WHY DID MOHAMMED REJECT CHRISTIANITY? 215 

but of tradition ; the Christ, not of the Canonical, but 
of the Apocryphal Gospels, and even these only from 
general tradition. The wonder is, Mohammed's infor- 
mation being confined to the incoherent rhapsodies and 
the miraculous inanities of the Gospels of the Infancy, 
the Acta Pilati and the "Descensus ad Inferos," not 
that he reverenced Christ so little, but so much. In the 
whole of the Koran there are only three passages which 
look like any direct acquaintance with the Evangel- 
ists; and one of these, the well-known passage about 
the Paraclete, he misunderstands himself, and accuses 
Christians of intentionally perverting from its proper 
meaning a prediction of the coming of the Periclyte, 
the Greek form of Mohammed, the Illustrious, or the 
Praised.* 

II. Secondly, the worship of saints and images, and 
the shape which certain floating ideas had taken when 
they were stereotyped in the formulas of the Christian 
Church, seemed to Mohammed to conflict with his fun- 
damental doctrine of the unity of God. The mysteries 
of the Trinity were to be appraised and handled by 
every one who called himself a Christian, not merely as 
a test, but as the test of his Christianity. Mohammed 
accuses even the Jews of having lost sight of their pri- 



* Sura lxi., 6. 



216 MOHAMMED AND MOHAMMEDANISM. 

mary truth, which was also his, in calling Ezra the Son 
of God ;* and what wonder if he rejected a religion the 
essence of which he understood, and too many Chris- 
tians of his time understood, to be, not a holy life, but, 
as it is still represented in the Athanasian Creed, an 
elaborate and unthinkable mode of thinking of the 

Trinity ?f 

Let us hear on these points Mohammed himself, re- 
membering all the while how slight was his knowledge 
of the doctrine which he travestied, and how dim the 
outline of the majestic character which yet filled his 
imagination : 

" They surely are infidels w r ho say God is the third of 
three, for there is no god but one God.".'}: 

"Say not three; forbear, it will be better for thee; 
God is only one God." § 

Christ was with Mohammed the greatest of Proph- 
ets. I He had the power of working miracles ; he spoke 

* Sura ix., 30. 

t It is doubtful whether a people that has once become monotheistic in 
any other form than the Christian can ever be brought to accept, I do 
not say Christianity altogether, but the doctrines that are often supposed 
to be of its very essence. Among such a people the missionary invariably 
finds that the doctrine of the Trinity, however explained, involves Trithe- 
ism, and their ears are at once closed to his teaching. To a Pagan who 
accepts Christianity the change no doubt is one from Polytheism to Mo- 
notheism, but to the Jew or Mohammedan, except in very rare instances, 
it is the opposite. 

X Sura v., 77. § Sura iv., 6. || Sura ii., 254. 



MOHAMMED'S VIEWS OF THE TRINITY. 217 

in his cradle ; he made a bird out of clay. (Incidents 
drawn from the Gospels of the Infancy or of St. Thom- 
as.) He could give sight to the blind, and even raise 
the dead to life.* He is the Word proceeding from 
God; his name is the Messiah. Illustrious in this world 
and in the next, and one of those who have near access 
to God.f " He is strengthened by the Holy Spirit," for 
so Mohammed, in more than one passage, calls the Angel 
Gabriel.:}: Mohammed all but believes in the Immacu- 
late Conception of the Virgin,§ and certainly in the 
miraculous nature of the birth of Christ, to which he re- 
curs repeatedly.] But that Jesus ever claimed, as is 
affirmed by the writers of the New Testament, and as 
we know he did, to be the Son of God, still less that he 
ever claimed to be equal with God, Mohammed could 
not bring himself to believe. 

" It becometh not a man that God should give him 
the Scriptures, and the Wisdom, and the spirit of Proph- 
ecy, and that then lie should say to his followers, Be 
ye worshipers of me as well as of God ; but rather, Be 



* Sura iii., 41-43. t Sura in., 40. % Sura iL, 81. 

§ Sura iii., 30. There was a well-known sect of Christians called Col- 
lyridians in Arabia who paid the Virgin divine honors, and offered her a 
twisted cake (icoWvpig). Thence, no doubt, came Mohammad's idea that 
the Virgin was one of the Persons of the Trinity. 

II Sura xix., 20. 



K 



218 MOHAMMED AND MOHAMMEDANISM. 

ye perfect in things pertaining to God, since ye know 
the Scriptures, and have studied them."* 

And again, " For the Messiah himself said, O chil- 
dren of Israel, worship God, my Lord and yours." f 

And once more, " Those who say that Jesus, the Son 
of Mary, is the Son of God, are infidels, for who could 
stop the arm of God if he were to destroy the Messiali 
and his mother, and all who are in the earth together?":}: 

Neither can Mohammed ever believe that Jesus could 
have been crucified. " It is so long ago, let us hope that 
it is not true," said an old Cumberland woman when 
she heard for the first time in her life the story of the 
Crucifixion. "If I and my brave Franks had been 
there, we would have avenged his injuries," was the ex- 
clamation of the fierce barbarian Clovis when he re- 
ceived his first lesson in the Christian life. The Dream- 
er of the Desert sympathized rather with the first of 
these. As Stesichorus§ believed that the Greeks and 
Trojans fought for the phantom of Helen, and not for 
Helen herself; as the Docetists held that the phantom 
of Jesus and not Jesus had been crucified ; so Moham- 
med rebels at the thought that God can ever have al- 
lowed such a tragedy to take place. Some one else, he 
curiously supposes, who deserved such a death — perhaps 

* Sum iii., 73. J Sura v., 19. 

t Sura v., 76. § Plato, " Republic," ix., 386. 



MOHAMMED'S VIEWS OF CHRIST. 219 

it was Judas himself — may have been substituted for 
Christ ; and Christ being taken up to heaven, must have 
felt that the deception thus practiced on the Jews was a 
kind of punishment to himself for not having taken 
greater pains to prevent men calling him the Son of 
God.* And at the resurrection Jesus will himself testi- 
fy against both Jews and Christians ; the Jews for not 
having received him as a prophet, the Christians for 
having received him as God. 

There is a short chapter in the Koran which Mus- 
sulmans look upon as equal to a third of the whole in 
value : 

"Say there is one God alone — 
God the Eternal ; 

He begetteth not, and he is not begotten, 
And there is none like unto him."f 

And once more, " They say the Merciful hath gotten 
offspring. Now have ye done a monstrous thing; al- 
most might the very heavens rend thereat, and the earth 
rend asunder, and the mountains fall down in fragments, 
that they ascribe a son to the Merciful, when it becometh 
not the Merciful to beget a son. Verily there is nobody 
in the heavens nor in the earth that shall approach the 
Merciful but as a servant." X 

I have dwelt thus at length upon Mohammed's views 

* Sura iii., 49 ; iv., 156. t Sura cxii. \ Sura xix., 91-94. 



220 MOHAMMED AND MOHAMMEDANISM. 

of Christ, partly because of the intrinsic interest and 
importance .attaching to the views held by one so great 
of one so infinitely greater; partly because they show 
how little Mohammed, and indeed how little Christians 
themselves, understood the real nature of Christianity ; 
partly also because the strictures of Mohammed, how- 
ever exaggerated and however mistaken, seem to me to 
suggest a caution necessary for us all. Christ came to 
reveal God, not to hide him ; to bring him down to 
earth, not to shroud him in an immeasurable distance-; 
to tell us that God is not primarily Justice, or Truth, or 
Power, but Love. Do Christians always remember this ? 
Are our views of Justification, of Original Sin, of a Fut- 
ure Life, when drawn out in the forensic and almost 
legal language in which some churches foolishly de- 
light to clothe them, always consistent with it ? Do our 
prayers always pre-suppose a God who, in his own in- 
trinsic nature, is anxious to receive them ? Are we not 
apt to forget the unity of God while we dogmatize on 
the Trinity ? Do we not sometimes place Christ, as it 
were, in front of God, thinking so much of the Son who 
sacrificed himself that we ignore the Father who "spared 
him not" — forgetting the Giver in the very magnitude 
of the gift? 

III. And the third reason, and perhaps the most im- 
portant of all, for Mohammed's rejection of Christianity, 



IS ISLAM ANTI-CHRISTIAN? 221 

is the fact that Christianity as he knew it had been tried 
and had failed. It had been known for three hundred 
years in Arabia, and had not been able to overthrow, or 
even weaken, the idolatry of the inhabitants. 

It is strange, with this fact and the whole course of 
history before him, with which evidently few are more 
familiar, that a great writer can conclude a review of 
Mohammedanism, which is otherwise fair and able, by 
indorsing the charge made against it that it has kept 
back the East by hindering the spread of Christianity. 
The charge has been often made before,* but it rests 
on so slender a basis that I should not have thought 
it necessary to discuss it here had I not found at the 
last moment that one who is apparently so high an 
authority has lent the weight of his name to it. That 
I may do him no injustice, I quote his own words : 

" Mohammed in his own age and country was the 
greatest of reformers — a reformer alike religious, moral, 
and political. . . . But when his system passed the bor- 
ders of the land in which it was so great a reform, it 
became the greatest of curses to mankind. The main 
cause which has made the religion of Mohammed exer- 
cise so blighting an influence on every land where it 
has been preached, is because it is an imperfect system 

* As, for instance, by Sir W. Muir, vol. iv., p. 321. 



222 MOHAMMED AND MOHAMMEDANISM. 

standing in the way of one more perfect. Islam has in 
it just enough of good to hinder the reception of greater 
good. . . . Because Islam comes nearer to Christianity 
than any other false system, because it comes nearer 
than any other to satisfying the wants of man's spiritual 
nature, for that very reason it is, above all other false 
systems, pre-eminently anti-Christian. It is, as it were, 
the personal enemy and rival of the Faith, disputing on 
equal terms for the same prize !" * 

This indictment is so well drawn, at first sight it so 
carries conviction with it, and yet, if true, it is so fatal 
to any favorable or any fair judgment of Mohammedan- 
ism, that I am compelled, while I gladly acknowledge 
the author's fair and sympathetic treatment of the sub- 
ject in every page that precedes and follows those I have 
quoted, to contest, from my point of view, as strongly as 
I can, upon this question, alike his facts and his infer- 
ences. 

Upon what single fact, then, either before or after 
Mohammed's time, does the writer ground this charge ? 
If the purest Christianity of all, preached by Christ and 
his Apostles, did not make way in the Eastern world ; 
if the few Christian churches which did exist among 
the half Roman or Hellenic inhabitants of Syria and of 

* British Quarterly Review, Jan., 1872, p. 132-134. 



SPIRIT OF CHRIST. 223 

Africa had sunk to the condition in which we know they 
were when Mohammedanism swept them away, what 
reason have we, either a priori or a posteriori, for sup- 
posing that the Christianity of any later time would 
have been more successful ? Have Christian nations 
been so energetic or so successful in converting any of 
those African or Asiatic nations which Mohammedanism 
has never reached, as to entitle us to turn round upon 
the religion which has remoulded so large a portion of 
the human race, and tell it that it is a curse to humanity 
because, forsooth, while we admit it was in its time a 
grand forward movement and has been a higher life to 
untold millions since, we wish that Fetich worship should 
have lasted on perhaps till now, that Christianity may 
now have the chance of doing the work somewhat bet- 
ter ? If this is Christianity, I only say most certainly it 
is not of Christ. It is not of the spirit of him who said 
that those who w T ere not against him were with him; 
and rejoiced that good was done by others, even if it 
seemed an infringement of his own divine commission. 
Christ was not like the Praetorian prefect of Tacitus, 
" Consilii, quamvis egregii, quod non ipse afferret in- 
imicus" though some Christians would have it that he 
was. The only monopoly of good that Christianity, if 
it is of the spirit of its Founder, may claim, is the mo- 
nopoly, not of doing good, but of rejoicing at it when- 



224 MOHAMMED AND MOHAMMEDANISM. 

ever it is done, and whoever does it; of showing, if it 
carries out its Founder's intentions, that it is wide enough 
to recognize as its own and to embrace within its ample 
bosom all honest " seekers after God," and all true bene- 
factors of humanity. The most " anti-Christian " religion 
is not that which comes nearest to Christianity, but that 
which is furthest removed from it ; and the religion 
which after Christianity comes nearest to " satisfying 
the wants of man's spiritual nature" is really not its 
most deadly enemy, but its best ally. To say otherwise, 
liberal and tolerant as the author unquestionably is, is 
to encourage w r eaker men under the shadow T of his name,* 
not merely to indulge in the odium theologicum, but 
to assert that the odium theologicum itself is Christian. 

"Non tali auxilio nee defensoribus istis 
Tempos eget." 

Can it be forgotten that the churches planted by the 
great Apostle were, without exception, to the west of 
Palestine — that star-worship and fire-worship were un- 
affected by Christianity then, even as Brahminism and 
Buddhism are unaffected by it now ? Can we point to a 

* This has actually been the case, for the passage I have quoted was 
the only one in an otherwise most temperate essay upon which religious 
periodicals pounced, and, by quoting apart from its context, fanned the 
flame of misconception and prejudice which, even when read with every 
thing which tends the other way, it would, in my judgment, be likely to 
kindle. 



CHRISTIANITY THE RELIGION OF THE WEST. 225 

single Oriental nation which has been able to accept and 
to retain Christianity in its pure form, or to a single re- 
ligion to be named with Mohammedanism in point of 
parity and sublimity, which has ever been able to over- 
throw any national Oriental faith ? And, if we can not, 
what right have we to say that it is Islam, and not Nat- 
ure, that has hitherto stood in the way of Christianity in 
Arabia and Persia, in Africa and India ? The triumphs 
of the Cross have indeed been far purer, far wider, far 
sublimer than those of the Crescent ; but they have been 
hitherto confined to the higher races of the world. Un- 
civilized nations of the higher stock — Ostrogoths and 
Visigoths, Vandals and Lombards, Franks and North- 
men, the Celt, the Teuton, and the Sclavonian — invaded 
Christianity only to be conquered by it. But upon the 
Oriental barbarians of a lower race who invaded Europe, 
with the one exception of the Magyars, whose case is 
special * — Huns and Avars, Turks and Tartars — it has 

* The Magyars, whatever their original home — and it seems that they 
were of the Finnish stock — are probably the most mixed race on the 
Continent of Europe, and were so even before they settled within the 
limits of the present Hungary. In their march toward Europe they were 
joined by hosts of Chazars, Bulgarians, and Sclavonians. During their 
ravages, which lasted for some fifty years, and spread from the Oural 
Mountains to the Pyrenees, they transported women and children whole- 
sale from the countries they overran to their head-quarters on the Danube; 
and it is probable that at the time of their avowed conversion by Adal- 
bert, about A.D. 1000, they had at least as much German and Italian as 
they had Tartar blood in their veins. St. Piligrinus (quoted by Gibbon, 

K2 



226 MOHAMMED AND MOHAMMEDANISM. 

had no influence. Shall Christians, then, complain of 
Mohammedans for having succeeded in some measure in 
doing for the East what they have failed to do ; or would 
Christ have rejected what good service Mohammed did 
because his credentials were not precisely those of the 
Apostles? What superficial appearance of truth there 
is in the charge is this — that no Mohammedan nation 
has hitherto accepted Christianity, while some nations 
that were nominally Christians have accepted Moham- 
medanism. But to establish the charge it would, of 
course, be necessary to show that the East, if it had not 
accepted Mohammedanism, would have accepted a real 
Christianity, or any religion so much like Christianity as 
Mohammedanism unquestionably is ; and to do this we 
must read history backward. 

Now Mohammed offered to the Arabs an idea of God 
less sympathetic and less lovable, indeed, but as sublime 
as the Christian, and perhaps still more intense, and one, 
as it turned out, which they could receive. Christianity 
was compelled to leave its birthplace — the inhabitants 
and subsequent history of which it has scarcely affected, 
except indirectly — to find its proper home in the West- 
ern world, among the inhabitants and progressive civil- 

vol. vii., p. 172), the first missionary who entered Hungary, says that he 
found the "majority of the population to be Christians," qui ex omni parte 
mundi illuc tracti sunt captivi. 



ISLAM THE RELIGION OF PASTORAL RACES; 227 

ization of Greece and Rome. The lot of Mohammedan- 
ism has been different; "it is the religion of the shep- 
herd and the nomad, of the burning desert and the 
boundless steppe." So admirably suited was it to the 
region in which it was born, that it needed no foreign 
air or change of circumstances to develop it* 

In its simple grandeur it has been able, without tam- 
pering with that which is its Alpha and Omega — the 
belief in one God, who reveals himself by his prophets 
— to leave the most essential elements of national life to 
the various nations which made up the Arabian Empire ; 
and to adapt itself to every peculiarity, mental and mor- 
al, of the inhabitants of Central and Western Asia. The 
rapid intuition and the wild flights of imagination ; the 
vivid mental play around the antinomies of the reason, 
and the craving for the supernatural in the utmost par- 
ticularity of detail ; the fervid asceticism of the Dervish, 
and the mystic Pantheism of the Soufy, have each found 
in Islam something to meet their wants. 

But, on the other hand, Mohammedanism has never 
passed into countries of a wholly different nature, and 
held them permanently. Spain is not a case in point, 
though it was never so well governed as under the Mo- 
hammedans ; for the Spaniards themselves never became 

* Compare throughout this paragraph, M. Barthelemy St. Hilaire, p. 
230, seq. 



228 MOHAMMED AND MOHAMMEDANISM. 

Mohammedan, and the Moorish settlement there was 
only like a Greek lmru\i<Tjxa or a Roman colonia — an 
outpost in the heart of the enemy's country. Much the 
same may be said of Turkey, where the subject popula- 
tion has always remained Christian. I can not, there- 
fore, "pace tanti nominis" follow Gibbon in his picture 
of the probable consequences to European civilization 
had Charles Martel been conquered at Tours — of Mus- 
sulman preachers demonstrating to a circumcised audi- 
ence, in the mosques of Paris and of Oxford, the truth 
of the religion of Mohammed ! The wave of conquest 
might have spread over Europe ; but it would have been 
but a wave, and few traces would have been left when 
it had swept on. In Africa the case was different; the 
Greek colonists and Roman conquerors — the higher 
races, in fact — were driven out by the Saracens, and, " in 
their climate and habits, the wandering Moors who re- 
mained behind already resembled the Bedouins of the 
desert."* Mohammedanism is the only form in which 
the knowledge of the true God 1ms ever made way with 
the native races of Africa ; and the form of Christianity 
which it supplanted in the North — the Christianity of 
the Donatists and of the jSTitrian monks ; of Cyril, 
strangely called a saint ; and of the infamous George of 

* Gibbon, vol. vi., p. 473. 



ISLAM IN AFRICA AND SPAIN 229 

Cappadocia, still more strangely transformed into St. 
George of England, the patron of chivalry and of the 
Garter — was infinitely inferior to Mohammedanism it- 
self. 

I fully admit that Mohammedanism, if indeed it had 
succeeded in conquering the most civilized races of the 
world and the Christianity of the West, as it succeeded 
in conquering the Eastern nations and their various 
forms of belief, would have conquered something that 
was potentially better than itself, and then it would have 
been what Christian writers are so fond of calling it — 
a curse to the world rather than a blessing. It would 
have stepped beyond what I conceive to have been its 
proper mission ; but I maintain that it stopped short of 
this, and that it destroyed nothing that was not far in- 
ferior to itself. I should hesitate to say that even its 
conquest of Spain was not, while it lasted, a blessing to 
Spain itself, and through Spain to the whole of Europe. 
Has Spain exhibited more order, more toleration, more 
industry, better faith, more material prosperity, under 
her most Christian Kings or under her Ommiade Ka- 
liphs ? The names of the three Abdal Rahmans, and 
of Almamun, suggest all that is most glorious in Spanish 
history, and much that has conferred benefit on the rest 
of Europe in the darkest period of her annals — religious 
zeal without religious intolerance, philosophy and litera- 



230 MOHAMMED AND MOHAMMEDANISM, 

ture, science and art, hospitals and libraries and univer- 
sities. 

It follows, from what I have said, that Mohammedan- 
ism is not a world-wide religion. The sphere of its in- 
fluence is vast, but not boundless ; in catholicity of ap- 
plication it is as much below the purest Christianity as 
the Semitic and Turanian nations which have embraced 
it arQ below the Western Indo-Germanic. I say the 
Western Indo-Germanic races, for among the Eastern 
branches of that great family, the inhabitants of Per- 
sia and of Hindoostan, Mohammedanism did establish 
itself. 

The Persians are of a race and genius widely different 
from the Arabs ; but the surroundings and the general 
mode of life are the same in each, and the exception, so 
far as it is an exception, to the rule I have laid down, 
tends rather, in its results, to prove its general truth, for 
the hold of Mohammedanism on them has been much 
modified by the difference of race. The religion which 
proclaimed the absolute supremacy of God was no doubt 
an infinite advance upon the " chilling equipoise " of 
good and evil to which the creed of Zoroaster had at 
that time sunk.* Nor was the national existence of 
Persia stamped out, as has been often said, by the Ka- 

* See Elphinstone's " India," vol. v., p. 313. 



ISLAM IN PERSIA AND INDIA. 231 

liphs; for the Persian province of Khorasan was itself 
strong enough to place the Abbasside Kaliphs on the 
throne of Bagdad ; and the Persian dynasties of the 
Samanides and Dilemites gave to' the nation a new lease 
of life, and a wholly new national literature; and it is 
to a Mohammedan Sultan of the Turkish race that Per- 
sia owes her greatest literary glory, her national epic, the 
" Shahnameh" of Ferdousi. Still it can not be said that 
the religion proved itself altogether suited to the people. 
In other countries the scimiter had no sooner been 
drawn from its scabbard than it was sheathed a^ain. 
But in Persia the scimiter had not only to clear the 
way, but for some time afterward to maintain the new 
religion.* The Persians corrupted its simplicity with 
fables and with miracles ; they actually imported into it 
something of saint-worship and something of sacerdotal- 
ism ; and, consequently, in no nation in the Mohammed- 
an world has the religion less hold on the people as a 
restraining power. The most stringent principles of the 
Koran are set at naught ; beng and opium are common ; 
the Ketman, or religious equivocation, is held to be as 
allowable as it has been by the Casuists or the Jesuits ; 
and the nation which Herodotus tells us devoted a third 
of its whole educational curriculum to learning to speak 

* See Sir John Malcolm's " History of Persia," vol. i., p. 277, etc. 



232 MOHAMMED AND MOHAMMEDANISM. 

the truth, now contains hardly an individual who will 
speak the truth unless he has something to gain by it. 

In Hindoostan, amid the other branch of the great 
Aryan race which did not move westward, Mohammed- 
anism has obtained finally a very strong footing ; but it 
was slow in winning its way ; and the thirty million 
Mussulmans over whom we rule — and a tremendous 
and but half -recognized responsibility it is* — devout 
as they are, have become so by long lapse of time, by 
social influences, and by intermixture with conquering 
Arabs, Ghaznevides, and Affghans, rather than by the 
sudden fervor of religious enthusiasm.f 

Those who have followed me thus far will perceive 
that my main object in writing these Lectures has been, 
if possible, to render some measure of that justice to 
Mohammed and to his religion which has been all too 
long, and is still all too generally, denied to them. I 
have naturally, therefore, been led to dwell rather on 
the points in which Mohammedanism resembles Chris- 
tianity than on the points in which it differs, and I 
have been led, also, to some extent, to compare the per- 



* Since this was written the grievances of Mohammedans in India, so 
ably and temperately stated by Mr. Hunter, have been in part alleviated 
by the adoption of some of the remedies he suggests, at least as far as re- 
gards education. 

t Elphinstone, vol. v., p. 314, and cap. iii. on the reign of the Sultan 
Mahmoud. 



CONTRAST BETWEEN ISLAM AND CHRISTIANITY. 233 

sons of their respective Founders. It is not possible 
to avoid this. Of the Founder of Christianity I have 
necessarily spoken only under that aspect of his char- 
acter which Mussulman as well as Christian, friend as 
well as foe, will perforce allow him ; and in which 
alone, by the nature of the case, he can be compared 
with any other founder at all. In like manner, in com- 
paring the two creeds, I have insisted mainly on the 
points in which they approximate to each other ; and 
to do this is more necessary, more just, and, I venture 
to think, more Christian, than to do the opposite. 

But if, in order to prevent misconception, the two 
creeds must necessarily be contrasted rather than com- 
pared, nothing that I have said, or am going to say, will 
prevent my admitting fully — what, indeed, is apparent 
upon the face of it— that the contrasts are at least as 
striking as the resemblances. 

The religion of Christ contains whole fields of moral- 
ity and whole realms of thought which are all but out- 
side the religion of Mohammed. It opens humility, pu- 
rity of heart, forgiveness of injuries, sacrifice of self to 
man's moral nature; it gives scope for toleration, devel- 
opment, boundless progress to his mind ; its motive pow- 
er is stronger, even as a friend is better than a king, and 
love higher than obedience. Its realized ideals in the 
various paths of human greatness have been more com- 



234 MOHAMMED AND MOHAMMEDANISM. 

manding, more many-sided, more holy, as Averroes is 
below Newton, Haroun below Alfred, and Ali below 
St. Paul. Finally, the ideal life of all is far more ele- 
vating, far more majestic, far more inspiring, even as 
the life of the founder of Mohammedanism is below 
the life of the Founder of Christianity. 

And when I speak of the ideal life of Mohammedan- 
ism I must not be misunderstood. There is in Moham- 
medanism no ideal life in the true sense of the word, 
for Mohammed's character was admitted by himself to 
be a weak and erring one. It was disfigured by at least 
one huge moral blemish ; and exactly in so far as his 
life has, in spite of his earnest and reiterated protesta- 
tions, been made an example to be followed, has that 
vice been perpetuated. But in Christianity the case is 
different. The words, "Which of you convinceth me 
of sin?" forced from the mouth of Him who was meek 
and lowly of heart, by the wickedness of those who, 
priding themselves on being Abraham's children, never 
did the works of Abraham, are a definite challenge to 
the world. That challenge has been for nineteen cent- 
uries before the eyes of unfriendly, as well as of be- 
lieving, readers, and it has never yet been fairly met; 
and at this moment, by the confession of friend and foe 
alike, the character of Jesus of Nazareth stands alone in 
its spotless purity and its unapproachable majesty. We 



CONTRAST BETWEEN MOHAMMED AND CHRIST. 235 

have each of us probably at some period of our lives 
tried hard to penetrate to the inmost meaning of some 
one of Christ's short and weighty utterances — 

" Those jewels, five words long, 
Which on the stretched forefinger of all time 
Sparkle forever." 

But is there one of us who can say there is no more be- 
hind ? Is there one thoughtful person among us who 
has ever studied the character of Christ, and has not, in 
spite of ever-recurring difficulties and doubts, once and 
again burst into the centurion's exclamation, "Truly 
this was the Son of God ?" 

Nor are the methods of drawing near to God the 
same in the two religions. The Mussulman gains a 
knowledge of God — he can hardly be said to approach 
him — by listening to the lofty message of God's Proph- 
et. The Christian believes that he approaches God by 
a process which, however difficult it may be to define, 
yet has had a real meaning to Christ's servants, and has 
embodied itself in countless types of Christian charac- 
ter — that mysterious something which St. Paul calls a 
" union with Christ." " Ye are dead, and your life is 
hid with Christ in God." 

But this unmistakable superiority does not shake 
my position that Mohammedanism is, after all, an ap- 
proach to Christianity, and perhaps the nearest approach 



236 MOHAMMED AND MOHAMMEDANISM. 

to it which the unprogressive part of humanity can 
ever attain in masses ; and yet how large a part of the 
whole human race are unprogressive ! Whatever we 
may wish, and however current conversation and liter- 
ature may assert the contrary, progress is the exception, 
and not the rule, with mankind. The whole Eastern 
world, with very few exceptions, has been hitherto and 
is still stationary, not progressive. What Oriental soci- 
ety is now, it was in the time of Solomon — I might say, 
in the time of Abraham. Even those nations which, 
like the Chinese, have considerable powers of invention 
and mechanical skill, reach a certain height rapidly, and 
then stop short.* 

Accepting, then, the non-progressiveness of a large 
part of the human race, when left to themselves, as a 
fact, can not we estimate other religions, not by our 
conception of what we want, but by their bearing on 
the life of those whom they affect, ennobling them so 
far as the other conditions of their existence mav ren- 



* I specify China ; for I can not accept the changes relied upon by Dr. 
Bridges in his very able essay on China, in "International Policy," as 
being evidence of continuous and progressive change, which is the real 
point at issue. Of course this in no way affects the more important 
questions treated of in the essay, the moral elevation of which seems to 
me almost unequaled in the writings even of those who, like the contrib- 
utors to the volume referred to, and the followers of Aiiguste Comte gen- 
erally, have labored most earnestly to treat all political questions from a 
moral stand-point. 



A RELATIVE STANDARD TEE ONLY TRUE ONE. 237 

der possible ? Judged by this relative standard — which 
is, as I conceive, the only true one — Mohammedanism 
has nothing to lose, and every thing to gain, by the keen- 
est criticism.* I grant to the full every thing that can 
be said by travelers such as Burckhardt and Burton 
and Palgrave upon the degradation of the mass of the 
Bedouins and the Turks, and the want of all vital relig- 
ion, sometimes of the very elements of religion, among 
them. But is the state of the Mohammedan world as a 
whole worse in proportion to its light than was that of 
Christendom when the cup of iniquity was full and a 
Luther was born ? To take a particular instance, has 
religion less hold upon the Arabs than it had upon the 
English throughout the last century, till the evangelical 
revival of Wesley and Whitefield aroused it from its 
sleep? Has it less hold even upon the "Frenchmen of 
the East," as the Persians have been called — liars, 
drunkards, profligate though they are — than it has at 
this moment upon the Frenchmen of the West ? What 
account do travelers in Russia give us of the state of 
religion among the masses there? And what judgment 



* Abyssinia is a case in point for those who think that a religion, be- 
cause it is better and purer in itself, is necessarily better than all other 
religions, wherever and whenever and in whatever degree of purity it may 
be found. Abyssinia has been nominally Christian since very early times, 
and yet it would puzzle the greatest enemy of Islam to name a single 
particular in which the inhabitants are superior to their Mussulman neigh- 



238 MOHAMMED AND MOHAMMEDANISM. 

must pious Mohammedans form of Christianity, if their 
knowledge of it is confined to the average lives of Eu- 
ropeans who profess it ? 

To say that gross abuses have crept into Mohammed- 
anism — that the lives of many, or even of the majority, 
who profess it are a disgrace to their name — is only to 
say that it is not exempt from the common conditions 
of humanity. 

Take one instance, drawn from the history of the 
Christian Church. Christianity was in its origin and in 
its essence a creed entirely spiritual ; but Christians, 
forming, as they did, a new human society, were allow- 
ed by their Founder to symbolize this close union, and 
to bring it home more vividly to themselves and to the 
world, by two external rites. The mere fact that they 
were external, in a religion which was otherwise a mat- 
ter of the heart, ought to have put men on their guard, 
lest they should assume in time a too prominent place ; 
lest what was accidental and secondary and relative 
should dominate over what was absolute and primary 

bors. Spain may suggest similar thoughts. We are apt to forget that 
there are two factors to be considered in testing the value of a religion 
in any given case — the creed itself and the people who receive it. There 
are of course good and bad men, and these of every degree of goodness 
and badness, to be found professing every creed ; but the average morality 
of the followers of an imperfect creed may, in this very imperfect world, 
be better than the average morality of those who profess a higher one, 
and of course vice versa. Havrcov fierpov avSpujiroQ. 



ALL RELIGIONS LIABLE TO CORRUPTIONS. 239 

and eternal. Baptism was of considerable importance in 
the infancy of the Church, for it was a pledge of fideli- 
ty consciously and voluntarily given by a new recruit, in 
the face of the enemy, to a cause whose victories were 
yet in the future. It was, as it were, the uniform as- 
sumed by the small army which at its Master's bidding 
went forth against the world. The love-feast also was 
of special importance among the earliest Christians, as a 
constant reminder that those who had taken upon them- 
selves the commission of the Cross, that crowning act of 
love, were bound to one another by the same enthusiasm 
of love which bound them to their common Master. 
Both did good service then, and in the history of the 
Christian Church have dohe good service since, in so far 
as they have acted upon the heart, and thence upon the 
conduct, through the medium of a powerful appeal to 
the religious imagination. But in so far as any myste- 
rious or supernatural efficacy has been attached to the 
form of either, they have sapped the root of Christianity. 
They have done for Christianity w^hat of good, no doubt, 
Mohammed thought — and half rightly, half wrongly 
thought — that pilgrimages to the holy places might do 
for Mohammedanism. Both were so far concessions to 
human weakness that they introduced formal, or even 
material, conceptions into a spiritual religion ; both, in 
fact, were capable of being used to advantage ; and 



240 MOHAMMED AND MOHAMMEDANISM. 

experience has proved that they were both alike liable 
to the same kind of abuse. 

Every human institution, therefore — religion itself, so 
far as man can affect it — is exposed to inevitable decay ; 
and the purer the religion, the more inevitable the degra- 
dation which contact with the world, which is not of it, 
must bring. * Accordingly, a religion which is not wait- 
ing for a revival, is waiting only till it be swept away. 

But, on the other hand, we must not judge of a relig- 
ion by its perversions or corruptions ; and it is as fair to 
take Turkish despots and maniac dervishes and Persian 
libertines as types of the Mohammedan life, as it would 
be to take Anabaptists or Pillar Saints or Jesuits as 
types of the Christian life. Most of the well-known 
vices of our Mohammedan fellow-subjects in India are 
Indian vices, and not Mohammedan. Max Muller has 
remarked with truth, that without constant reformation 
— that is to say, without a constant return to the fount- 
ain-head — every religion, however pure, must gradually 
degenerate. Christianity has always reformed itself, and 
will to the end of time continue to reform itself, by 
going back to the words and to the life of Christ. It is 
a maxim of the Buddhists that " what has been said by 
Buddha, that alone is well said ;"f and it is currently be- 

* Max Miiller, " Chips," Preface, p. 23. 
t Quoted by Max Miiller, loc. cit., p. 23. 



ISLAM HAS THE POWER OF REVIVAL. 241 

lieved that Mohammedanism is dying out because it has 
no such power of revival. But the very reverse of this 
is, rattier, true. Probably no religion has produced, in 
the various parts of its vast empire, a more continuous 
succession of reformers, whose aim has been to bring it 
back to its original simplicity and purity. Such was 
one object, however wildly they set about it, of the Car- 
mathians in the ninth century ; and, to select one 
among many individual reformers, such was the career 
of Abdul Wahhab, the son of a petty Arabian sheik, a 
hundred and fifty years ago. The facts I take almost 
verbatim from an interesting and able essay on "Our 
Indian Mussulmans" by Dr. Hunter.* 

Commencing by a moral attack upon the profligacy 
of the Turkish pilgrims and the mummeries which pro- 
faned the holy cities, Abdul Wahhab gradually elaborat- 
ed a theological system which is substantially identical 
with the original creed of Mohammed. He taught, first, 
absolute reliance on one God, and the rejection of all 
mediators between man and God, whether saints or Mo- 
hammed himself ; second, the right of private interpre- 
tation of the Koran ; third, the prohibition of all forms 
and ceremonies with which the pure faith has been over- 
laid in the lapse of centuries ; finally — and this is the 

* See Hunter, p. 55-60 ; and for a further account of the Arab move- 
ment, see Burckhardt's " Notes on the Bedouins and Wahhabees." 

L 



242 MOHAMMED AND MOHAMMEDANISM. 

only part to be regretted in the movement — he reas- 
serted the obligation to wage war upon the infidel. In 
1803 Wahhab's successors took the holy cities, and des- 
ecrated the sacred mosque at Mecca and the Prophet's 
tomb at Medina, to save them from the greater desecra- 
tion, as it seemed to those Puritans of the Desert, in- 
volved in the almost divine honors lavished on them by 
ignorant or profligate pilgrims. 

Here was an act upon the significance of which we may 
well dwell for a moment, and endeavor, by comparing 
it with somewhat parallel and better-known cases, to real- 
ize what it must have seemed like then, and what it proves 
about Mohammedanism now. Imagine the feelings of 
pious Jews when their most religious king broke into 
pieces the relic of relics, the memorial of the divine de- 
liverance and of their desert life, and stigmatized it as a 
bit of brass ! Imagine, if you can, the feelings of the 
Apostles when it dawned upon them that one of their 
number, even then, was a traitor in his heart ! Imagine, 
to take a parallel case suggested by Mr. Hunter,* medi- 
aeval Christendom, when the news spread that Bourbon's 
cutthroats were installed in the Yatican, and that the 
head of the Christian Church had been taken captive by 
the Church's eldest son ! Imagine Luther, when in the 
fervor of youthful enthusiasm he visited the Rome of 

* Hunter, p. 59. 



THE WAHHABEES, 243 

the Martyrs and of the Apostles, and found it to be the 
Rome of the Papacy, the Rome of impostures and indul- 
gences, of the Borgias and the Medici ! And we can then 
picture to ourselves the thrill of horror that must have 
passed through the orthodox Mussulman world when 
they heard that a sect of reformers, whose one idea of re- 
form was a return to the life and doctrine of the Proph- 
et, had rifled the mosque whose immemorial sanctity the 
Prophet had himself increased by making it the Kiblah 
of the world, and had even violated the Prophet's tomb. 
Imagine, on the other hand, what it must have cost the 
Wahhabees to have, like Luther, the courage of their 
convictions, to appear to stultify themselves, to dishonor 
their Prophet, and all that they might make their relig- 
ion the spiritual religion that it had once been ! And 
then say, if you can, that Mohammedanism has no pow- 
er of self -reform, and is dying gradually of inanition ! 

Beaten down at last by the strong arm of Mehemet 
Ali, Pasha of Egypt, in 1812, helped, I regret to say, 
by Englishmen, the Wahhabees disappeared tempo- 
rarily from Arabia,* only to reappear in 1821 in In- 

* For a graphic and not very favorable account of the Wahhabee Em- 
pire, as it exists now in Arabia and its seat of government at Riad, see 
Palgrave's " Arabia, " chap. ix.-xiii. There are one or two passages in 
this account, e. g., vol. i.", p. 365-373, 427-437, in which I can not but 
think, with all my admiration for Mr. Palgrave's varied powers, that he 
has not been, even on his own showing elsewhere, altogether fair to Islam 
as a system. 



24:4: MOHAMMED AND MOHAMMEDANISM. 

dia, under the leadership of the prophet Sayyed Ah- 
mad ; and the despised sect of "Wahhabees are now, 
perhaps, the real ruling spirit of Mussulman polities 
in India, and enjoy the singular honor of having, as 
much, no doubt, by their gloomy fanaticism as by their 
moral lives and their missionary zeal, attracted to them- 
selves considerable attention even from their English 
rulers at home. Puritans of the Puritans of Islam, 
they are despised and hated by the so-called orthodox 
Mussulmans, as the Lutherans were hated by Leo, and 
the Covenanters by Claverhouse. 

The extraordinary phenomena attending the great 
religious movement called Babyism now going on in 
Persia, the ecstatic martyrdoms and the prodigality of 
tortures submitted to amid songs of triumph by wom- 
en and children, the followers of the " Bab," are well 
worth the study of all who are interested in the his- 
tory of religion ; and, however we explain the facts, 
much that I said of Wahhabeeism may, mutatis mu- 
tandis^ be said of it ; and at all events its existence 
is a standing proof that Persian Mohammedanism 
possesses so much of vitality as is necessary to adapt 
an old creed to a new belief.* 

When I first wrote the above paragraphs on the 

* See Gobineau, "Les Religions et les Philosophies dans l'Asie Cen- 
trale,"p. 141-215. 



THE OTTOMAN SUPREMACY, 245 

power of revival which I conceive to be inherent in 
Islam, I did not know that my words were at that very 
time being illustrated in the most striking way, not 
only in India and Persia and Arabia, upon which 1 
then dwelt, but also throughout the Asiatic dominions 
of the Ottoman Sultans. Since then Mr. Palgrave's 
most interesting " Essays on Eastern Questions " have 
come into my hands ; and I find in them both evidence 
to show that there is such a revival, and a graphic ac- 
count of its leading symptoms. 

Secular and denominational schools are every where 
giving place to schools of the most strictly Mussulman 
type. Mosques which were deserted are now crowded 
with worshipers ; mosques which were in ruins are re- 
built. There is a general reaction, not perhaps to be 
wondered at, against the employment in public offices 
of the European and the Christian. Wine and spirit 
shops are closed, for their trade is gone except among 
the Levantine residents. Even opium and tobacco are 
becoming luxuries w T hich are not only forbidden, but 
also forsaken. 

Add to this, what Mr. Palgrave has also shown, that 
a new nation is as it were growing up under our eyes in 
Eastern Anatolia, rich with all the elements of a vigor- 
ous national and religious life, and we shall then have 
reason to believe that though the Ottoman supremacy 



246 MOHAMMED AND MOHAMMEDANISM. 

may pass away, as Kaliplis and Sultans, Attabeks and 
Khans, Padishahs and Moguls, have passed away be- 
fore them, yet Islam itself is a thing of indestructible 
vitality, and may thrive the more when rid of the mag- 
nificent corruptions and the illusory prestige of the 
Stamboul successors of the Prophet. In truth, Islam 
has existed for centuries in spite of Osmanlee rule, and 
not because of it ; and this the embassadors lately sent 
to the Porte from the most distant parts of the Mus- 
sulman world — from Bokhara and Khotan, from the 
Sultan of Atchin and the Sultan of the Panthays — 
must have learned to their cost, when they found that 
the so-called Commander of the Faithful was sufficient- 
ly employed nearer home, and had neither the power 
nor the will to give them the help or even the advice 
they asked. 

/ Mohammedanism, therefore, can still renew its youth, 
and it is possible that the present generation, in face of 
the advance of semi-barbarous and intolerant Russia, 
may see a revival of the old crusading spirit — an out- 
burst of stern fanaticism, which, armed with the cour- 
age of despair, obliterating, as in the Circassian war,* 

* See Baron Von Haxthausen's " Tribes of the Caucasus;" especially 
his interesting account of the rise of Muridism, and the heroic struggle of 
Schamyl, his personal influence, and his genius for military and political 
organization. Truly while Mohammedanism can throw off geniuses like 
Schamyl, it may well be able to dispense with such governments as that 



LIMITS TO INFLUENCE OF EAST ON WEST. 247 

even the immemorial schism of Soimee and Sheeah, 
may hurl once more the united strength of the Crescent 
upon the vanguard of advancing Christendom. It is a 
prospect formidable to every Christian Power — formid- 
able above all to those who for good or for evil rule 
thirty millions of Mussulmans in India ; but I can not 
think, even if the result were to be that a stop should 
be put to all further conquests of Europeans in the 
East, that the world would be altogether a loser there- 
by. In the East a revived Islam contains more ele- 
ments of hope for the future than a corrupt Christianity 
— and Christianity in Asia has rarely been otherwise 
than dead ;* and the religious enthusiasm of some new 
Commander of the Faithful — of some heroic Schamyl 
or Abdel Kader on a vaster scale — than the dull, heavy 
tread of military despotism beneath the shadow of the 
Czars of all the Russias. 



of the Turks. The Baron's prophecies of a general collapse of Moham- 
medanism are being signally falsified. The union of Sonnees and Sheeahs 
was one principle of Muridism as taught by Moollah Mohammed, and 
after him by Schamyl. 

* For the marked superiority, for instance, of the tribes of the Cau- 
casus which are Mohammedan, to those which are nominally Christian, 
see Freshfield's " Caucasus," p. 454-457 : "In the Caucasus the traveler 
will be compelled to contrast the truthfulness, industry, and courteous 
hospitality of the Mohammedans north of the chain with the lying indo- 
lence and churlishness of the Christians in the south ;" and for the gen- 
eral subject of Oriental Christianity as it is found in Armenia, Georgia, 
Syria, Egypt, etc., see Palgrave's essay entitled " Eastern Christians." 



248 MOHAMMED AND MOHAMMEDANISM. 

And here, perhaps, will be the place to make a few 
remarks upon a subject which can not have failed to 
attract the attention of the more thoughtful among us 
in recent years — I mean the attempt made to introduce 
Western manners and customs into Eastern countries. 

We live in days when we hear of Khans and Khe- 
dives, Shahs and Sultans, giving up their immemorial 
passivity and seclusion, and even coming to Europe 
with the avowed intention of carrying back to Asia 
what they can of Western science and civilization. I 
should be slow, indeed, to complain of any steps taken 
by the Western Powers to do away with any institu- 
tions which, like the Suttee, the festivals of Juggernaut, 
the East African slave-trade, or the traffic in opium, are 
a curse to our common humanity, or are not grounded 
on any fundamental peculiarity of the Eastern world. 
But to attempt by force, or even by influence brought 
to bear upon Eastern rulers, to do away with any 
domestic or national institutions, such as the form of 
government or patriarchal slavery, or even polygamy, 
can do no good. 

Eastern despotism is not what Western despotism is, 
nor is Oriental slavery like American. Nor is even 
polygamy in the East so intolerable an evil as it would 
be in the social freedom of the West. For example, an 
Eastern sovereign has all the power over his subjects 



EASTERN DESPOTISM. 249 

that a father had in the most primitive times, and had 
even in Rome, over his children. His power is liable 
to the same abuses ; but it has also some of its safe- 
guards and redeeming points. To introduce into his 
government, as the Shah has been supposed to wish, 
a system of Boards and Parliaments, of checks and 
counter-checks, such as works fairly well in this coun- 
try, because it has grown with our growth and is suit- 
able, to our instinct of compromise in every thing, 
would be to make many tyrants instead of one, and to 
cripple the power and lessen the responsibility of the 
only man in Persia whose interest it is to let no one 
commit injustice but himself. Asia, till its whole nat- 
ure be changed, can probably never be better governed 
than it was by the early Kaliphs ; and if an Abou Bakr 
or an Omar, or even a Haroun or a Mahmoud, a Baber 
or an Akbar, do not come twice in a century, it is prob- 
able that Nature has endowed Asiatics with precisely 
those qualities of patience, docility, and inertness which 
harmonize better with the evils of such a government 
than with those of any other. 

Polygamy is a more difficult question, and it is im- 
possible, for obvious reasons, to discuss it adequately 
here. It is a gigantic evil, worse even than slavery; 
for with its attendant mischiefs, so far as it extends, it 
does away with all real sympathy and companionship 

L 2 



250 MOHAMMED AND MOHAMMEDANISM. 

between man and woman ; it is unnatural in the fullest 
sense of the word, in a highly civilized nation, for Nat- 
ure, by making the number of men and women equal, 
has declared decisively for monogamy. But, in a bar- 
barous people, polygamy has this one redeeming point, 
that it is less likely that any woman will be left without 
a natural protector; and, as a matter of fact, it is al- 
most universally allowed in primitive stages of civiliza- 
tion.* In the East it is the almost inevitable result of 
that fundamental institution of Eastern as well as of 
Moslem society, the absolute seclusion of women. There 
is an impervious bar to all social intercourse between 
the sexes before marriage. The husband's knowledge 
of his future wife is at second hand only, and rests on 
the report of a Khatibeh,f or professional match-maker. 
Such a marriage is more than a lottery; there can be 
no affection to begin with, and, except on rare occasions, 



* In an uncivilized nation, split up, as Arabia was before Mohammed, 
into a number of hostile tribes, or overrun by its more powerful neigh- 
bors, as was Palestine in the time of the Judges, the number of births 
of men and women is no doubt about equal ; but the male population is 
reduced by war to half its proper number ; the preponderance of women 
in such a state of society renders polygamy possible, and the insecurity ren- 
ders it from that one point of view allowable. Sir Samuel Baker, in his 
"Albert N-yanza," Introduction, p. 25, remarks that " in all tropical coun- 
tries polygamy is the prevailing evil." He might have gone on to say much 
the same of slavery ; but then what would become of the charge he so oft- 
en makes against Islam — that it is responsible for polygamy and slavery ? 

t Lane's "Modern Egyptians," vol. i., p. 199. 



POLYGAMY. 251 

it is not likely that it will turn out to be really happy. 
If it be thoroughly uncongenial, a man tries his luck 
once more in the same miserable lottery, and for his 
own happiness, and probably also for that of all con- 
cerned, annuls the previous bond. Hence polygamy 
implies freedom of divorce, and both together are the 
inevitable result of the seclusion of the female sex. 
But to abolish by law the two former, without dealing 
with the far more fundamental institution which is its 
root, would be to carry on a war with symptoms only, 
and to introduce evils worse than those it is wished to 
prevent. The only way of going to the root of the 
matter would be, if it were possible, to allow a freer 
intercourse between the sexes at all times ; Sir William 
Muir allows that this could not be done at all with the 
present freedom of divorce.* It is a melancholy fact, 
but a fact still, that the strict checks imposed by Mo- 
hammed on married women, degrading though they 
are,f are essential to prevent what is still worse, and, 
be it remembered, what was far worse before the re- 
forms and limitations which Mohammed himself im- 
posed. It is a complete dead -lock; and the greatest 
reformers, Moses no less than Mohammed, have been 
unable to deal with the root of the evil. It is to be 

* Mnir, vol. iii., p. 234, and note. 

t Sura xxxiii., 6, 56. Also Sura xxiv., 32. 



252 MOHAMMED AND MOHAMMEDANISM. 

remembered, on the other hand, that both Moses and 
Mohammed did what they could to restrain and modify 
its abuses; and at present neither polygamy nor divorce 
is so common as is often supposed. The humanity of 
human nature has asserted itself ; and Lane, the most 
accurate observer, says that polygamy is in Egypt at 
all events very rare among the higher classes, and not 
common among the lower.* 

Much the same may be said of slavery. The slavery 
of the East is a patriarchal institution, coeval with the 
very dawn of history. It is an institution allowed and 
modified by Moses, even as it was allowed and modified 
by Mohammed, for people in that stage of civilization 
which required it. In neither nation has it any thing 
in common with slavery as it was in America, or slavery 
as practiced at all by civilized nations. To do away 
with it by force, as has been the case in Khiva, though 
we naturally rejoice at it, will probably do little perma- 
nent good. It will revive in another, and probably a 
worse shape. Perhaps we have hit upon the one pos- 

* Lane, vol. i., p. 231 : "Not more than one husband in twenty has 
two wives at the same time. " But divorce is very common. If it were 
not for Lane's proverbial accuracy, one would be inclined to suspect that 
in the passage referred to in the text he had transposed the words higher 
and lower. Certainly in other parts of the Mohammedan world polygamy 
is, for obvious reasons, much more common among the rich than among 
the poor. But the current of opinion, like the general conditions of so- 
ciety, seems to be every where setting against it, especially in India. 



SLAVERY. 253 

j 

sible means of gradually getting rid of it, in making it 
impossible to recruit slavery from without by means of 
the slave-trade. Much will have to be done hencefor- 
ward by free labor in Arabia, in Persia, and in Egypt, 
which lias hitherto been done by slaves ; and we need 
not fear but that the result will be so good that even in 
a stolid Oriental people the gradual movement will be 
one in the direction of abolition. The foreign slave- 
trade, in fact, is, owing to the remonstrances of Dr. 
Livingstone and the expeditions of Sir Samuel Baker 
and Sir Bartle Frere, already, for the time at all events, 
almost at an end, and it is a mistake to suppose that it 
ever received any sanction either from Moses or Mo- 
hammed. Moses ordered the man-stealer and the man- 
seller to be put to death.* Mohammed is reported by 
the " Sonnah " to have said, " The worst of men is the 
seller of man."f 

Western science, with its railways, its canals, and its 
printing-presses, may, no doubt, do something for the 
material prosperity of Eastern countries, but by itself it 

* Exodus xxi., 16. 

t The slave-trade rests for its support on no religion at all, but only on 
that which is cruel and selfish in human nature. It is no more fair to tax 
Islam, as is often done, with the horrors of the East African slave-trade, 
than it would have been in the last century to tax Christianity with the 
still greater horrors of the West African traffic and its sequelce in America. 
It has been remarked with truth that the cruel treatment of domesticated 
slaves is the shameful and exclusive prerogative of civilization. 



25-1 MOHAMMED AND MOHAMMEDANISM, 

will do little for their moral welfare; and a thin var- 
nish of Western civilization, introduced by rulers who 
have been forced to admire the material power of the 
West, and have lost their own self-respect in the process, 
is earnestly to be deprecated. Those Orientals who have 
been most influenced by the Franco-mania of Stamboul 
are, beyond all comparison, the most degraded and prof- 
ligate of their race, and no earnest observer can wish 
to see imported into other parts of the Mohammedan 
world that indescribable combination of all that is con- 
temptible in human nature conveyed by the word Le- 
vantine. 

The heroic and unselfish lives of a few such men as 
Livingstone — alas that it is now all too certain that his 
life is a thing of the past! — are the only legitimate 
means of introducing into semi-civilized countries such 
benefits as we think we have to bestow. A life and 
character like Livingstone's has done more to regenerate 
the African races than any amount of direct preaching, 
or any number of European settlements, with the mis- 
erable and immoral wars that so often follow in their 
train. Such men are the true pioneers of civilization 
and Christianity — of the only species of civilization and 
the only form of Christianity which we have any reason 
to expect will be a real benefit to the East. 

But does it follow, from what I have said of the im- 



CAN ISLAM PROGRESS ? 255 

mobility of the East, that it is impossible for Islam to 
make any advance at all ; that it is impossible for it to 
yield any thing to the progressive civilization of Chris- 
tianity and of the West ? 

How Christianity and civilization should deal with 
Mohammedanism I have partly indicated already, and 
shall have a very few more words to say upon the sub- 
ject presently. But, first, what can Islam do on its part ? 
Where religion and law are indissolubly bound up to- 
gether, as they are in the Koran, each loses and each 
gains something. What they gain in stability, they 
more than lose in flexibility. And yet it may be safely 
said that there is nothing more extraordinary in the 
whole history of Islam than the way in which the 
theory of the verbal inspiration of the Koran, and the 
consequent stereotyped and unalterable nature of its 
precepts, have, by ingenuity, by legal fictions, by the 
"Sonnah," or traditional sayings of Mohammed, and 
by responsa prudentum, been accommodated to the 
changing circumstances and the various degrees of civ- 
ilization of the nations which profess it. When the 
Kadi fails to find in the law laid down for the nomad 
Arabs a rule precisely applicable to the more complex 
requirements of Smyrna or of Delhi, he places the sa- 
cred volume upon his head, and so renders homage to 
human reason and to the law of progress. He does 



256 MOHAMMED AND MOHAMMEDANISM. 

what Puritans and Churchmen would alike do well to 
remember, when each professes to find in the varying 
or convertible expressions of the writers of the New 
Testament a divinely ordered and unalterable model of 
Church government.* It is not, therefore, quite so true 
as is commonly supposed that Islam is reconcilable with 
one narrow form of government or society only; and it 
is quite possible that where so much has been done al- 
ready, more may be done in future, and means may 
be found for reconciling, for instance, the laws against 
taking interest for money with the requirements of 
modern society. The intolerant principles of the Koran 
have long since been reconciled, except where there is 
a passing outburst of fanaticism, with the utmost prac- 
tical toleration ; and the standard of the " Jihad," or 
holy war, will probably never henceforward be raised 
on an extensive scale except in a war of self-defense, 
and unless the lives and liberties of Mohammedans, as 
well as their religion, are at stake. 

And, what is infinitely more important, it seems to 
me that while Mohammedans cling as strongly as ever 
to their rigid Monotheism, and to their unfaltering be- 



* Compare Acts xx., 17, fiersKaXeffaro tovq irptafivrkpovg rrjg iickXt)- 
criag, with ver. 28, vjxag . . . eSsto t7ri<jic67rovg. The watchwords of the 
bitterest ecclesiastical jealousy and hatred are in this passage of the New 
Testament seen to be, after all, synonymous and convertible terms. 



CAN IT APPROXIMATE TO CHRISTIANITY ? 257 

lief in the divine mission of their Prophet — and what 
serious person could wish them to do otherwise — to give 
up those beliefs which have made them what they are, 
which have given them a glorious history, and which 
have influenced half a world ; to give up — 

"."'.'". Those first affections, 
Those shadowy recollections, 
Which, be they what they may, 
Are yet the fountain-light of all their day, 
Are yet a master-light of all their seeing; 

Uphold them— cherish — and have power to make 
Their noisy years seem moments in the being 
Of the eternal silence : truths that wake 
To perish never!" 

while they cling, I say, to these as strongly, yes, more 
strongly than ever, they may yet be brought to see that 
there is a distinction between what Mohammed said 
himself and what others have said for him ; and that 
there is a still broader distinction between what he said 
as a legislator and as a conqueror, and what he said as a 
simple prophet. There are some among them who see 
now, and there will be more who will soon see, that 
there may be an appeal to the Mohammed of Mecca 
from the Mohammed of Medina; that there may be an 
idolatry of a book, as well as of a picture, or a statue, or 
a shapeless mass of stone ; and that the Prophet, who 
always in other matters asserted his fallibility, was never 
more fallible, though certainly never more sincere, than 



258 MOHAMMED AND MOHAMMEDANISM. 

when he claimed an equal infallibility for the whole 
Koran alike. Finally, with the growth of knowledge 
of the real character of our faith, Mohammedans must 
recognize that the Christ of the Gospel was something 
ineffably above the Christ of those Christians from 
whom alone Mohammed drew his notions of him ; that 
he was a perfect mirror of that one primary attribute 
of the Eternal of which Mohammed could catch onlv a 
far-off glance, and which, had it been shown to him as it 
really was, must needs have taken possession of his soul. 
All this may or may not be in our own time ; but in 
a sympathetic study even of Mohammedanism as it is, 
Christians have not a little to gain. There is the pro- 
test against Polytheism in all its shapes ; there is the 
absolute equality of man before God; there is the sense 
of the dignity of human nature ; there is the simplicity 
of life, the vivid belief in God's providence, the entire 
submission to his will ; and last, not least, there is the 
courage of their convictions, the fearless avowal before 
men of their belief in God, and their pride in its posses- 
sion as the one thing needful. There is in the lives of av- 
erage Mohammedans, from whatever causes, less of self- 
indulgence, less of the mad race for wealth, less of servil- 
ity, than is to be found in the lives of average Christians. 
Truly w T e may think that these things ought not so to 
be ; and if Christians generally were as ready to confess 



WHAT CAN CHRISTIANS LEARN FROM ISLAM? 259 

Christ, and to be proud of being his servants, as Moham- 
medans are of being followers of Mohammed, one chief 
obstacle to the spread of Christianity would be removed. 
And the two great religions which started from kindred 
soil, the one from Mecca, the other from Jerusalem, 
might work on in their respective spheres — the one the 
religion of progress, the other of stability ; the one of a 
complex life, the other of a simple life ; the one dwell- 
ing more upon the inherent weakness of human nature, 
the other on its inherent dignity ;* the one the religion 
of the best parts of Asia and Africa, the other of Europe 
and America — each rejoicing in the success of the other, 
each supplying the other's wants in a generous rivalry 
for the common good of humanity. 

A few words more about Mohammed himself, and I 
have done. The world, in its w T isdom or unwisdom, has 
never thought proper to distinguish Mohammed from 
the millions of Mohammeds named after him by calling 
him " the Great." Perhaps he was too great for such 
an external distinction. People call the conqueror of 
Constantinople, eight centuries later, Mohammed the 
Second. But I do not think they ever speak of the 
Prophet as Mohammed the First ; and perhaps the un- 
conscious homage thus rendered to him by a world which 

* Perhaps the two views are, after all, only different aspects of the same 
truth. 



260 MOHAMMED AND MOHAMMEDANISM. 

ostensibly, and till very lately, has done liim such scant 
justice, is the highest tribute that can be given to his 
greatness. The Greeks paid the highest compliment 
they could to the surpassing splendor of the King of 
Persia when, consciously. or unconsciously, they dropped 
the article before his name, and so put him on a level, 
grammatical and moral, with the sun, the moon, and the 
earth, which could by no possibility need any such dis- 
tinguishing mark. Compare Mohammed with the long 
roll of men whom the world by common consent has call- 
ed " Great ;" while I admit that there is no one point in 
his character in which lie is not surpassed by one or 
other, take him all in all, what he was, and what he did, 
and what those inspired by him have done, he seems to 
me to stand alone, above and beyond them all. A distin- 
guished writer on the Holy Roman Empire has remark- 
ed of Charles the Great that, " like all the foremost men 
of our race, he was all great things in one."* But 
though Mr. Bryce does not illustrate the truth of his re- 
mark by Mohammed — nay, by not including him among 
the foremost men of the world whom he goes on to enu- 
merate, he seems designedly to exclude him — I venture 
to think that of no one of them all is this remark 
more strictly true. 

* Biyce's "Holy Roman Empire," p. 73. 



CHARACTER OF MOHAMMED. 261 

Mohammed did not, indeed, himself conquer a world 
like Alexander or Caesar or Napoleon. He did not 
himself weld together into a homogeneous whole a vast 
system of states like Charles the Great. He was not a 
philosophic king like Marcus Aurelius ; nor a philoso- 
pher like Aristotle or like Bacon, ruling by pure reason 
the world of thought for centuries with a more than 
kingly power ; he was not a legislator for all mankind, 
nor even the highest part of it, like Justinian ; nor did 
he cheaply earn the title of " the Great " by being the 
first among rulers to turn, like Constantine, from the 
setting to the rising sun. He was not a universal phi- 
lanthropist, like the greatest of the Stoics — 

u Non sibi sed toti genitum se credere mundo;" 

nor was he the apostle of the highest form of religion 
and civilization combined, like Gregory or Boniface, like 
Leo or Alfred the Great. He was less, indeed, than 
most of these in one or two of the elements that go to 
make up human greatness, but he was also greater. 
Half Christian and half Pagan, half civilized and half 
barbarian, it was given to him in a marvelous degree to 
unite the peculiar excellences of the one with the pecul- 
iar excellences of the other. "I have seen," said the 
embassador sent by the triumphant Koreishites to the 
despised exile at Medina — "I have seen the Persian 
Chosroes and the Greek Heraclius sitting upon their 



262 MOHAMMED AND MOHAMMEDANISM. 

thrones, but never did I see a man ruling his equals as 
does Mohammed." 

Head of the State as well as of the Church, he was 
Csesar and Pope in one ; but he was Pope without the 
Pope's pretensions, and Csesar without the legions of 
Csesar. Without a standing army, without a body-guard, 
without a palace, without a fixed revenue, if ever any 
man had the right to say that he ruled by a right di- 
vine, it was Mohammed ; for he had all the power with- 
out its instruments and without its supports. He rose 
superior to the titles and ceremonies, the solemn tri- 
fling and the proud humility of court etiquette. To he- 
reditary kings, to princes born in the purple, these things 
are, naturally enough, as the breath of life ; but those 
who ought to have known better, even self-made rulers, 
and those the foremost in the files of time — a Csesar, 
a Cromwell, a Napoleon — have been unable to resist 
their tinsel attractions. Mohammed was content with 
the reality, he cared not for the dressings, of power.* 
The simplicity of his private life was in keeping with 
his public life. " God," says Al Bokhari, " offered him 
the keys of the treasures of the earth, but he would not 
accept them." 

Hagiology is not history ; but the contemporaries of 

* See "British Quarterly Review," Jan., 1872, p. 128. 



CAN CHRISTIANS INFLUENCE MUSSULMANS? 263 

Mohammed, his enemies who rejected his mission, with 
one voice extol his piety, his justice, his veracity, his 
clemency, his humility, and that at a time before any 
imaginary sanctity could have enveloped him. A Chris- 
tian even, as is remarked by a great writer whom I have 
quoted above, with his more perfect code of morality 
before him, must admit that Mohammed, with very rare 
exceptions, practiced all the moral virtues but one; and 
in that one, as I have shown, he was in advance of his 
time and nation. 

Assuredly, if Christian missionaries are ever to win 
over Mohammedans to Christianity, they must alter their 
tactics. It will not be by discrediting the great Arabian 
Prophet, nor by throwing doubts upon his mission, but 
by paying him that homage which is his due ; by point- 
ing out, not how Mohammedanism differs from Christi- 
anity, but how it resembles it ; by dwelling less on the 
dogmas of Christianity, and more on its morality ; by 
showing how perfectly that Christ whom Mohammed 
with his half-knowledge so reverenced came up to the 
ideal which prophets and kings desired to see, and had 
not seen, and which Mohammed himself, Prophet and 
King in one, could only half realize. In this way, and 
in this alone, is it likely that Christianity can ever act 
upon Mohammedanism; not by sweeping it into obliv- 
ion — for what of truth there is in it, and there is very 



264 MOHAMMED AND MOHAMMEDANISM. 

much truth, can never die — but by gradually, and per- 
haps unconsciously, breathing into its vast and still vig- 
orous frame a newer, a purer, and a diviner life. 

By a fortune absolutely unique in history, Moham- 
med is a threefold founder — " of a nation, of an empire, 
and of a religion." Illiterate himself, scarcely able to 
read or write, he was yet the author of a book which 
is a poem, a code of laws, a Book of Common Prayer, 
and a Bible in one, and is reverenced to this day by a 
sixth of the whole human race as a miracle of purity of 
style, of wisdom, and of truth. It was the one miracle 
claimed by Mohammed — his "standing miracle" he 
called it; and a miracle indeed it is. But looking at 
the circumstances of the time, at the unbounded rev- 
erence of his followers, and comparing him with the 
Fathers of the Church or w T ith medieval saints, to my 
mind the most miraculous thing about Mohammed is 
that he never claimed the power of working miracles. 
Whatever he had said he could do, his disciples would 
straightway have seen him do. They could not help 
attributing to him miraculous acts which he never did, 
and which he always denied he could do. What more 
crowning proof of his sincerity is needed? Mohammed 
to the end of his life claimed for himself that title only 
with w 7 hich he had begun, and which the highest philos- 
ophy and the truest Christianity will one day, I venture 



MOHAMMED A TRUE PROPHET. 265 

to believe, agree in yielding to him — that of a Prophet, 
a very Prophet of God. 

The religion, indeed, that he taught is below the pur- 
est form of our own, as the central figure of the Moham- 
medan religion is below the central figure of the Chris- 
tian — a difference vast and incommensurable; but, in 
my opinion, he comes next to him in the long roll of 
the great benefactors of the human race; next to him, 
longo intervallo certainly, but still next. He had faults, 
and great ones, which he was always the first himself, 
according to his light, to confess and to deplore ; and 
the best homage we can render to the noble sincerity of 
his character is to state them, as I hope I have tried to 
do, exactly as they were. " It was the fashion of old,' 5 
to quote once more the words of our greatest novel- 
ist and greatest psychologist — and so to conclude this 
course of Lectures, of the manifold imperfections and 
shortcomings of which no one of those who have so 
kindly listened to me week after week can be half so 
conscious as myself — " It was the fashion of old, when 
an ox was led out for sacrifice to Jupiter, to chalk the 
dark spots, and give the offering a false show of un- 
blemished whiteness. Let us fling away the chalk, and 
boldly say — the victim is spotted, but it is not therefore 
in vain that his mighty heart is laid on the altar of 
men's highest hopes." 

M 



APPENDICES. 



APPENDIX TO LECTURE I. 



Sir Baetle Frere, in an interesting and able and cath- 
olic essay in " The Church and the Age " on Indian Mis- 
sions, takes a hopeful view of the future of India as influ- 
enced by Western civilization and Christianity. He be 
gins (p. 318) by showing, rightly enough, that almost ev- 
ery thing we do in India tends to break up old beliefs, and 
so to prepare the way for a new one, and is, therefore, more 
or less missionary work ; " not only railways and printing- 
presses, education, commerce, and the electric telegraph ; 
our impartial codes and uniform system of administration ; 
but our misfortunes and our mistakes, our wars, our fam- 
ines, and our mutinies." He then gives (p. 334-337) elabo- 
rate statistics of the missionary agencies at work in 1865 in 
Western India ; they have enormously increased in the last 
thirty years, and he estimates the number of missionaries 
at work at about 105, and the number of converts at some- 
where about 2200 ; and this, multiplied by six or seven, 
would probably, he thinks, give a general idea of the di- 
rect results of missionary work during that period through- 



268 APPENDICES. 

out all India (I would remark here that an official state- 
ment published in 1873 gives a much more favorable ac- 
count, estimating the number of communicants at 78,494); 
but when Sir Bartle Frere comes to deal with Mohammed- 
anism (p. 354-356), he gives no statistics on the point we 
most desiderate — the number of converts, if it be at all 
appreciable, from Islam to Christianity; the general re- 
marks, indeed, he does make, seem to me to go exactly 
contrary to the conclusions he draws from them — e. #., 
Mohammedans study portions of the Bible more than they 
did formerly ; but these portions unfortunately seem to be 
the prophetical writings, especially those of Daniel ; and 
they find therein the denunciations of Christianity which 
Christians find in it against other creeds; they are humil- 
iated by the fact that Mohammedanism is no longer the 
imperial creed of India; but the upshot of their depression 
is not Christianity, but Wahhabeeism, i. 6., a return to Islam 
in its simplest and sternest shape. Brahmoism, which is 
really Brahmanism as modified by Christianity— Brahman- 
ism minus caste and minus idolatry of every kind — seems 
to be in some respects the beginning of a national move- 
ment, and, judging from the authoritative sermon (p. 346- 
352) delivered in Calcutta on the thirty-ninth anniversary 
of the Brahma Samaj, and entitled " The Future Church," 
seems to me to give real hope for the future, and to be 
very suggestive as to the way in which missionaries should 
go to work. " The answer," says the preacher, " of Jesus 
the immortal Son of God, Thou shalt love the Lord thy 



APPENDIX TO LECTURE L . 269 

God with all thy heart, and with all thy mind, and with 
all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and thy neighbor 
as thyself, is the essence of true religion simply and ex- 
haustively expounded." "The composite faith of the fut- 
ure Church is to combine in perfect harmony the profound 
devotion of the Hindoo and the heroic enthusiasm of the 
Mussulman ;" but, unfortunately, the simplicity and intel- 
ligibility of the Mohammedan creed render it incapable at 
present of actually coalescing with the eclectic spirit of 
Brahmoism. It is strange at first sight that Mohammed- 
anism, originally the most eclectic of religions, should, in 
India at all events, prove itself to be the least capable of 
settling down on terms of equality with other creeds, or of 
combining with them. No doubt the fact that Moham- 
medanism has been the imperial creed and is so no longer, 
and the proud memories of Mahmoud and Akbar, of Baber 
and of Aurungzebe, are a formidable, though it is to be 
hoped a passing, difficulty. If the Mohammedan revival 
now going on in India under the influence of the Wahha- 
bees, the Firazees, and the followers of Dudu Miyan, can 
only be accompanied by a great moral reformation, such 
as Sprenger himself does not seem to despair of (vol. i., p. 
459 — "the Arabs only want another Luther"), the result, 
partially at least, of Christian influences, the simplicity of 
Islam will no doubt in its turn give it a great advantage 
over the Brahma Samaj in the struggle to fill the void 
created by the crumbling fabric of Hindooism. It has an- 
other great advantage in being already to some extent in 



270 APPENDICES, 

possession of the ground. I observe that one of the speak- 
ers at the recent Allahabad Missionary Conference says 
that thirty millions, the estimated number of Mussulmans 
in India, is much below the mark. 

The unfavorable opinion expressed by Dr. Livingstone 
on the effects of Mohammedanism in Africa (" Expedition 
to the Zambesi," p. 513-516, and 602-603) appears opposed 
to the general view I have taken in the Lecture ; and of 
course, so far as his personal experience goes, is unim- 
peachable and conclusive. But it is clear that Dr. Living- 
stone drew his general conclusions almost entirely from 
his acquaintance with the Arab slave-traders in the south 
and east of Africa, whom it was the main purpose of his 
noble and heroic life to put down. In the Lecture I have 
purposely not dwelt upon the extension of Islam along the 
coast to the south of the Equator, for the simple reason 
that the inhabitants are Mohammedans in nothing but the 
name. The Arabs there are of the most degraded type, 
and are engaged almost to a man in the brutalizing slave- 
trade, which by itself is a complete obstacle to every spe- 
cies of civilization and religion. No doubt, as Dr. Living- 
stone remarks, the native African there contrasts favorably 
with the Mohammedan — as favorably, I would add, as he 
does even with the Portuguese ; but that Dr. Livingstone 
judged of the whole of Mohammedan Africa by his expe- 
rience of its worst part is clear from his remark — opposed 
as.it is to the unanimous testimony of travelers in North- 
ern and Central Africa — " that the only foundation for the 



APPENDIX TO LECTURE I. 271 

statements respecting the spread of Islam in Africa is the 
fact that in a remote corner of Northwest Africa the Fou- 
lahs and Mandingoes, and some other tribes in Northern 
Africa, have made conquests of territory ; but that even 
they care so little for the extension of their faith, that aft- 
er conquest no pains whatever are taken to indoctrinate 
the adults of the tribe" (p. 513). Captain Burton asserts 
that "Mohammedans alone make proselytes in Africa." 
Dr. Livingstone says as explicitly " in Africa the follow- 
ers of Christ alone are anxious to propagate their faith." 
Here is a direct contradiction ; and it is obvious that in a 
country of such vast extent as Africa no such sweeping 
statement can be absolutely true. Perhaps Sierra Leone, 
to which Dr. Livingstone paid a visit for the purpose of 
testing the results of missionary enterprise, and to which 
he specially refers (p. 663), will furnish us with the best 
materials for pointing out how far the two statements are 
reconcilable with each other, and with substantial accu- 
racy. In Sierra Leone there is a large negro community, 
the members of which having been brought for many 
years into contact not only with direct Christian preach- 
ing, but, what is more important, with Christian education, 
government, and example, are both excellent citizens and 
sincere Christians, and, as one would expect, contrast fa- 
vorably in point of morality even with the best Moham- 
medans. This is unquestionably true ; and of the self-de- 
nying efforts of the missionaries, especially the native ones, 
within certain limits, it is impossible to speak too highly. 



272 APPENDICES. 

As to the exact number of Christians in the colony at this 
moment it is rather difficult to arrive at an accurate con- 
clusion ; but, to take Dr. Livingstone's figures, he remarks 
(p. 605) that in the census of 1861 the whole population of 
Sierra Leone itself was 41,000 souls, 27,000 of them being 
Christian, and 1774 Mohammedan — "not a very large pro- 
portion,'' he observes, " for the only sect in Africa which 
makes proselytes." It is not a large proportion, but what 
is the number now? Sierra Leone now affords the most 
striking proof that can be given of the extent to which on 
the one hand Islam is spreading in that part of Africa by 
the efforts of unassisted missionaries, and on the other of 
the absence of any such propagation of the Christian faith 
among the tribes beyond the limits of the settlement. 
When Dr. Livingstone visited Sierra Leone a few years 
ago, Islam was, as he says, hardly known there ; since then 
Mohammedan missionaries have come thither from the Fou- 
lahs and from the far interior, and with what result ? No 
one will say that it is the sword to which they owe their 
success, for the peace of Sierra Leone has been for years 
undisturbed. And now we have (Government Report of 
West African Colonies, 1873) the testimony of Mr. John- 
son (p. 15), the able and excellent missionary whom I have 
quoted in my Lecture, indorsed as it would seem by the 
bishop of the diocese, that the Christian community at 
Sierra Leone, however flourishing itself, has exercised no 
influence on the large number of native Africans resorting 
annually to the town for the purpose of trade, and still 



APPENDIX TO LECTURE L 273 

less has it done any thing to propagate itself by sending 
out missionaries among adjoining tribes. On the other 
hand, a few active and zealous Mohammedan missionaries 
have carried their peaceful war into the enemy's country, 
and have produced great results even among the Christian 
and native population of Sierra Leone itself; insomuch 
that the religion of a large portion, the Governor says of 
the majority, of the Christians within the settlement has 
been actually changed by their preaching. There may 
be, and it is to be hoped there is, exaggeration as to the 
numbers ; but there can be no doubt, looking to the con- 
sensus of testimony, that Islam is propagated in Western, 
Northern, and Central Africa ; that it is propagated by 
simple preaching and with marked success, even where a 
Christian government, and, what is better, Christianity it- 
self, is to a great extent in possession of the ground. One 
wishes that Dr. Livingstone, the greatest and most single- 
minded of all the friends of Africa, had himself come into 
contact with a few of these simple and single-minded Mo- 
hammedan missionaries. They come so near in many re- 
spects to his own ideal of what a Christian missionary 
ought to be, that one feels sure he would have been led to 
modify his judgment as to the system which produces 
them, and to the great teacher whom he rarely mentions 
but as the "false prophet." 

The remarks I have made in the Lecture as to the at- 
titude which it seems to me that Christian missionaries 
should adopt, wherever their eiforts appear to have a 

M2 



274 APPENDICES, 

chance of being successful— and surely there is too much 
evil in the world that is remediable to allow of a great 
expenditure of labor or money where there is no such 
prospect — have been suggested to me mainly by way of 
contrast to what I have read in most books devoted to 
the cause of Missions. Even so noble and self-sacrificing 
and single-hearted a man as Henry Martyn appears to 
have gone out as a missionary to India — nay, to have 
argued with Mohammedans — without having first read a 
word of the Koran, even in its English dress (" Memoir 
of Rev. Henry Martyn," by Rev. J. Sargent, p. 177: cf. 
225); and throughout his career he treats it as an "im- 
posture;" "the work of the devil." He is sent to fight 
"the four -faced devil of India" — i. e., Hindoos, Moham- 
medans, Papists, and Infidels (p. 259) ; and see a summary 
of his written arguments against Mohammedans (on p. 
335), w r hich are quite enough by themselves to account 
for his ill success. See also the account by another de- 
voted missionary, the Rev. C. B. Leupolt, of his mission at 
Benares ("Recollections of an Indian Missionary"), who 
takes much the same position. "The so-called Prophet 
of the Mohammedans ;" " the Koran is an assemblage of 
facts and passages taken from the Bible, mixed with a 
great number of gross and cunningly devised fables ;" 
"no Mohammedan who believes the whole Koran can 
have the notion of the true God;" "the Koran is calcu- 
lated to lead man daily farther from God, and to unite 
him closer to the Prince of darkness;" " Satan holds them 



APPENDIX TO LECTURE I. 275 

enthralled by a false religion," and so on. How not to 
deal with a different faith could hardly be better demon- 
strated than by the writings of two such admirable and 
devoted men. Surely the system has been to blame ! Hap- 
pily, as is shown from the general tone of the Allahabad 
Conference, and the explicit testimony of the Government 
of India in 1873, there has been a great advance in the 
right direction lately. Not to go beyond the limited cir- 
cle of one's own acquaintance, such men as Bishop Cot- 
ton ; the Rev. George and the Rev. Arthur Moule, now 
in China ; and the Rev. James Johnson, native of Sierra 
Leone — though I would not venture to say that they 
would in any degree accept my point of view — yet in 
reality would have much in common with it ; and all 
would certainly admit the immense amount of good that 
is to be found in the creeds which it is their duty to con- 
trovert. Alas, that those who knew Bishop Cotton well, 
and who therefore know what his catholic spirit might 
have done for India, can only now, when they think of 
him, repeat to themselves, consciously or unconsciously^ 
the touching lament — 

" But oh for a touch of the vanished hand, 
And a sound of the voice that is still!" 



APPENDIX TO LECTURE III. 



That the assertions I have made in the third Lecture, 
as to the comparative ferocity of Christian and Mussul- 
man religious wars, are within the mark, it would be easy 
to bring abundance of proof. I will adduce here one il- 
lustration only, drawn from the chief battle - ground of 
the contending forces, the Holy Land. Jerusalem capitu- 
lated to Omar, the third Kaliph, after a protracted block- 
ade, in the year 637. No property was destroyed except 
in the inevitable operations of the siege, and not a drop 
of blood was shed except on the field of battle. Omar 
entered the city with the Patriarch, conversing amicably 
about its history; at the hour of prayer he was invited 
by the Patriarch to worship in the Church of the Holy 
Sepulchre, but he refused to do so for fear that his de- 
scendants might claim a similar right, and so the freedom 
of religious worship, which he wished to secure to the in- 
habitants by the articles of capitulation, might be endan- 
gered. In the year 1099 the Holy City fell before the 
arms of the Crusaders after a much shorter siege. It was 
taken by storm, and for three days there was an indis- 
criminate slaughter of men, women, and children ; 70,000 
Mussulmans were put to the sword, 10,000 of them in the 
mosque of Omar itself: "in eodem templo decern millia de- 



APPENDIX TO LECTURE III. 277 

collata stmt; pedites nostri usque ad bases encore peremp- 
torzim tingebantur, nee feminis nee parvidis pepereerunt" 
This comes not from an enemy, but from the monkish his- 
torian, an eye-witness and a partaker of what he relates, 
Foulcher of Chartres. Raymond of Argiles and Daim- 
bert, Archbishop of Pisa, give similar details, and all with 
approval. The city itself was pillaged ; but the turn of 
the Saracens came once more in the year 1187. The 
breach was already forced, when the great Saladin re- 
tracted a hasty vow he had made to avenge the innocent 
blood that had been shed when the city had been sacked 
by the Crusaders, and took not Godfrey de Bouillon but 
Omar for his model. No blood was shed, and the cap- 
tives were allowed to ransom themselves, the Frankish 
Christians leaving the city, the Eastern Christians con- 
tinuing in peace. 

As to humanity in war in general, the progress made 
has not been so great as is commonly supposed, even 
among those who pride themselves — and who to some ex- 
tent pride themselves with reason — on being the pioneers 
of Christianity and civilization. Take the case of Africa. 
I am not aware that the Saracens in the full career of 
conquest deliberately burned a single city in the whole of 
the North of Africa, whether as a precautionary measure, 
or to support their prestige, or to glut their revenge. Can 
England say the same ? If we assume — a large assump- 
tion — that the war on the Gold Coast in 1874 is wholly 
justifiable, if we also assume that the burning of the ene- 



278 APPENDICES. 

my's capital was indeed a necessity, it was a necessity for 
which a Christian nation should go into mourning, and 
should contemplate not with feelings of triumph, but with 
those of humiliation and regret. Is there any thing of the 
kind, or has one single ruler either in Church or State — 
now that the elections are over, and the moral iniquity 
of the war has been condoned by its success — been heard 
to raise his voice in condemnation of it, as even Omar or 
Saladin mio;ht have done? It is difficult to see how the 
English nation, which has abolished the slave-trade in the 
West of Africa, and is in its best portions profoundly 
philanthropic, can honestly believe that they are advanc- 
ing the objects they have at heart when, in support of 
such a treaty as I have alluded to in the Lecture, they lead 
on a weaker barbarous nation, whom pro hac vice we des- 
ignate as "our allies," against a more powerful one, and 
deliberately burn out of their homes a people who, bar- 
barous and cruel as they were, have offended us not by 
their cruelty or by their human sacrifices, but by their hon- 
est belief that we had come to Africa to bar them from 
access to their own coast. It seems not to have occurred 
to any one that our "prestige" would have been suffi- 
ciently vindicated, and our future security sufficiently 
provided for, if we had burned down the palace of the 
king, the chief offender. But our "prestige" serves as 
an ample excuse for committing what we should condemn 
as crimes in any other nation. It is an entity that has 
juggled us into the belief that to destroy what we can 



APPENDIX TO LECTURE III. 279 

not retain and can not use is the prerogative, not of bar- 
barism, but of civilization and of Christianity. Had the 
war upon the Gold Coast been avowedly a war not for 
the spread of our influence, or for the security of a terri- 
tory acquired by questionable means, but a moral crusade 
against human sacrifice, or for any purely unselfish object, 
the case would have been different. Truly this war will 
be a damnosa hereditas to posterity, alike whether we 
accept or disclaim the fearful responsibilities in which it 
has involved us. 

There is an anecdote related of Mahmoud the Ghazne- 
vide, the great Turkish conqueror of Central Asia, which 
seems to me to be suggestive. Soon after the conquest 
of Persia, a caravan was cut off by robbers in one of its 
deserts, and the mother of one of the merchants who was 
killed went to Ghazni to complain. Mahmoud urged the 
impossibility of keeping order in so remote a part of his 
territories, when the woman boldly answered: "Why, 
then, do you take countries which you can not govern, 
and for the protection of which you must answer in the 
Day of Judgment ?" Mahmoud was struck with the re- 
proach ; whether it would have prevented all further con- 
quests on his part we do not know, for he died soon aft- 
erward ; but he liberally rewarded the woman, and took 
immediate and effectual steps for the protection of the 
caravans. 



APPENDIX. 



ISLAM. 

BY 

EMANUEL DEUTSCH. 



ISLAM. 



* 



The Sinaitic Manifestation, as recorded in the Penta- 
teuch, has become the theme of a thousand reflections in 
the Talmud and the Haggadah generally. Yet, however 
varied their nature — metaphysical, allegorical, ethical — 
one supreme thought runs through them all — the catho- 
licity of Monotheism, its mission to all mankind. Ad- 
dressed, apparently, to a small horde of runaway slaves, 
the " Law," those fundamental outlines of religious and 
social culture, revealed on Mount Sanai — " the lowliest 
of the range, to indicate that God's Spirit rests on them 
only that are meek of heart " — w T as indeed intended, the 
Masters say, for all the children of men. "Why," they 
ask, " was it given in the desert and not in any king's 
land ?" — To show that even as the desert, God's own 
highway, is free, wide open to all, even so are his words 

* This article appeared in the Quarterly Review for October, 1869, 
vol. cxxvii., Xo. 254, p. 293, and reviewed the following works : 1. " The 
Koran." 2. " The Talmud." 3. " The Sunnah." 4. " The Midrash." 
5. " Mohammed." By Sprenger. Allahabad, 1851. 8vo. Berlin, 3 
vols., 1861-65. 8vo. 6. "Life of Mahomet." By William Muir. 4 
vols. London, 1858-61. 8vo. 



284 APPENDIX. 

a free gift to all ; like the sun, the moon, and the stars. 
It was not given in the stillness and darkness of night, 
but in plain day, amid thunders and lightnings. Indeed, 
it had been offered to all nations of the world before it 
came to the " chosen one. 5 ' But they, one and all, had 
pointed to some special national bent or " mission " with 
which one or the other of these commandments would 
have interfered, and so they declined them all. And in- 
tensely characteristic are some of the ethnological pleas 
put into their mouths by the, at times, humorous Hagga- 
dah. As for those trembling waifs and strays who, worn 
out with " anguish of spirit and cruel bondage," a short 
while since would not even listen to the message of Lib- 
erty, and who now, scared with terrors and wonders, cried, 
" We will obey and hear !" — obey, as the old commenta- 
tors keenly point out, unconditionally, whatever we may 
hear — to them no choice had been left. Had they not ac- 
cepted the " Law," that self-same mountain would have 
covered them up, and that desert would have become 
their grave — a dictum significantly echoed by the Koran. 
But — the Legend continues — when this Law came to be 
revealed to them in the fullness of time, it was not re- 
vealed in their tongue alone, but in seventy : as many 
as there were nations counted on earth — even as many 
fiery tongues leap forth from the iron upon the anvil. . . . 
And as the voice went and came, echoing from Orient to 
Occident, from heaven to earth, all Creation lay hashed in 
awful silence. No bird sang in the air, the winds were 



ISLAM. 285 

still, the Seraphim paused in their three times " Holy !" 
" And all men," says Scripture, " heard and saw." They 
" heard " the voice — and to each it bore a different sound : 
to the men and the women, the young and the old, the 
strong and the weak. It appeared unto them like the 
voice of their fathers, their mothers, their children, all 
those whom they loved with their holiest and tenderest 
love. And they "saw." In that self-same hour God's 
Majesty revealed itself in its manifold moods and as- 
pects : as Mercy and as Severity, as Justice and as For- 
giveness, as Grace and Peace and Redemption. And 
through the midst of all these ever-varying sounds and 
visions there rolled forth the divine word, " I am the 
everlasting Jehovah, thy God, One God !" . . . 

In these and similar strains the wide and all-embrac- 
ing nature of the Monotheistic creed and call is set forth 
in those ancient documents to which we a«;ain venture to 
draw the attention of our readers, and from a new point 
of view. If, on a former occasion, we endeavored to 
sketch out of themselves their own aim and purport, their 
poetry and their prose, their law and their legend, we 
shall now endeavor to show how they may be, and must 
be, utilized for the investigation of phases of creed and 
thought apparently wide apart in time and tendency and 
place ; how far they form one of the most important 
sources — the most important one, perhaps — of Islam. 

We are not about to enter here into any " Origines Is- 
lamismi." This lies, at present, beyond our task. But 



286 APPENDIX. 

those who would adequately work out the whole problem 
of the Talmud — as far as it lies within individual ran«;e — 
must needs look somewhat deeply into the story of these 
phases. And with regard to Islam, it seems as if the 
knowledge of its beginning and progress, its tenets and 
its lore, were not quite as familiar as they might be to the 
world at large, notably England, which "holds the gor- 
geous East in fee." 

But before we proceed with our subject, we shall treat 
with all the reverence and all the freedom which belong 
to Science in these our days, let us look back — but a few 
centuries — and see what, for instance, the great theolo- 
gians and scholars of the time of the Reformation 
thought and said of Islam ; of its doctrine and the 
preacher thereof. 

Daniel's " Little Horn " betokens, according to Martin 
Luther, Mohammed. But what are the Little Horn's 
Eyes ? The Little Horn's Eyes, says he, mean " Moham- 
med's Alkoran, or Law, wherewith he ruleth. In the 
which Law there is naught but sheer human reason (eitel 
menschliche Vermin ft)" ..." For his Law," he reiter- 
ates, " teaches nothing but that which human under- 
standing and reason may well like." . . . Wherefore — 
" Christ will come upon him with fire and brimstone." 
When he wrote this— -in his " army sermon " against the 
Turks — in 1529, he had never seen a Koran. " Brother 
Richard's " (Predigerordens) " Confutatio Alcoran," dated 
1300, formed the exclusive basis of his argument. But 



ISLAM. 287 

in Lent of 1540, he relates, a Latin translation, though a 
very unsatisfactory one, fell into his hands, and once moi*e 
he returned to Brother Richard and did his Refutation 
into German, supplementing his version with brief but 
racy notes. This Brother Richard had, according to his 
own account, gone in quest of knowledge to " Babylon, 
that beautiful city of the Sarassins," and at Babylon he 
had learned Arabic and been inured in the evil ways of 
the Sarassins. When he had safely returned to his na- 
tive land, he set about combating the same. And this is 
his exordium : " At the time of the Emperor Heraclius 
there arose a man, yea, a Devil, and a firstborn child of 
Satan . . . who wallowed in . . . and he was dealing in 
the Black Art, and his name it was Machumet." . . . This 
work Luther made known to his countrymen, by trans- 
lating and commenting, prefacing and rounding it off by 
an epilogue. True his notes amount to little more than 
an occasional " Oh fie, for shame, you horrid Devil, you 
damned Mohammed !" or, "Oh, Satan, Satan, you shall pay 
for that !" or, " That's it, Devils, Sarassins, Turks, it's all 
the same !" or, c< Here the Devil smells a rat," or, briefly, 
" O pfui Dich, Teufel !" — except when he modestly, with a 
query, suggests whether those Assassins, who, according 
to his text, are regularly educated to go out into the 
world in order to kill and slay all Worldly Powers, may 
not, perchance, be the Gypsies or the " Tattern " (" Tar- 
tars ") ; or when he breaks down with a " Hie nescio quid 
dicat translator." His epilogue, however, is devoted to a 



288 APPENDIX. 

special disquisition as to whether Mohammed or the Pope 
be worse. And in the twenty-second chapter of this dis- 
quisition he has arrived at the final conclusion that, after 
all, the Pope is worse, and that he and not Mohammed is 
the real " Endechrist." " Wohlan" he winds up, " God 
grant us his grace, and punish both the Pope and Mo- 
hammed, together with their Devils. I have done my 
part as a true prophet and teacher. Those who won't 
listen may leave it alone." . . . 

In similar strains speaks the learned and gentle Me- 
lanchthon. In an introductory epistle to a reprint of 
that same Latin Koran which displeased Luther so much, 
he finds fault with Mohammed, or rather, to use his own 
words, he thinks that " Mohammed is inspired by Satan," 
because he " does not explain what sin is," and further, 
since he " showeth not the reason of human misery." He 
agrees with Luther about the Little Horn — though in an- 
other treatise he is rather inclined to see in Mohammed 
both Gog and Magog. And " Mohammed's sect," he says, 
"is altogether made up (conflata) of blasphemy, robbery, 
and shameful lusts." Nor does it matter in the least 
what the Koran is all about. " Even if there were any 
thing less scurrilous in the book, it need not concern us 
any more than the portents of the Egyptians, who in- 
voked snakes and cats. . . . Were it not that partly this 
Mohammedan pest and partly the Pope's idolatry have 
long been leading us straight to wreck and ruin — may 
God have mercy upon some of us !" . . . 



ISLAM. 289 

Thereupon Genebrard, on the Papal side, charged the 
German Reformers, chiefly Luther, with endeavoring to 
introduce Mohammedanism into the Christian world, and 
to take over the whole clergy to that faith. Maracci is 
of opinion that Mohammedanism and Lutheranism are not 
very dissimilar— witness the iconoclastic tendencies of 
both ! More systematically does Martinus Alphonsus 
Vivaldus marshal up exactly thirteen points to prove 
that there is not a shadow of difference between the two. 
Mohammed points to that which is written down — so do 
these heretics. He has altered the time of the fast — they 
abhor all fasts. He has changed Sunday into Friday — 
they observe no feast at all. He rejects the worship of 
the Saints — so do these Lutherans. Mohammed has no 
baptism — nor does Calvin consider such requisite. They 
both allow divorce — and so forth. Whereupon Reland — 
only 150 years ago — turns around, not without a smile on 
his eloquent lips, and wants to know how about the pray- 
ers for the dead, which both Mohammed and the Pope 
enjoin, the intercession of angels, likewise the visiting of 
the graves, the pilgrimages to the Holy Places, the fixed 
fasts, the merit of works, and the rest of it. 

If there be any true gauge of an age or a nation, it is 
the manner in which such age or nation deals with re- 
ligious phases beyond the pale. We shall not follow here 
the vicissitudes of that discussion of which we have in- 
dicated a few traits, nor the gradual change which came 
over European opinion with regard to Islam and its found- 

N 



290 APPENDIX, 

er. How the silly curses of the Prideaux, and Spanheiins, 
and D'Herbelots ; how their " wicked impostors," and 
" dastardly liars " and " devils incarnate," and Behemoths 
and beasts and Korahs and six hundred and sixty-sixes, 
gave room, step by step almost, to more temperate pro- 
tests, more civil names, less outrageous misrepresentations 
of both the faith and the man: until Goethe and Carlyle, 
on the one hand, and that modern phalanx of investigators, 
the Sprenger, and Amari, and Noldeke, and Muir, and 
Dozy, on the other, have taught the world at large that 
Mohammedanism is a thing of vitality, fraught with a 
thousand fruitful germs ; and that Mohammed, whatever 
view of his character (to use that vague word for once) be 
held, has earned a place in the golden book of Humanity. 
There is, however, another view which, though more 
slowly, yet as surely, is gaining ground in the conscious- 
ness, if not of the world at large, yet of those w T ho have 
looked somewhat more closely into this matter. It is 
this, that Mohammedanism owes more to Judaism than 
either to Heathenism or to Christianity. We would go a 
step further. It is not merely parallelisms, reminiscences, 
allusions, technical terms, and the like, of Judaism, its lore 
and dogma and ceremony, its Halacha and its Haggadah 
(words which we have explained at large elsewhere, and 
which may most briefly be rendered by " Law " and 
"Legend"), which we find in the Koran;* but we think 

* Several of these have been pointed out from Maracci, Eeland, Mill, 
Sale, to Geiger (1833) — the facile princeps on this field — Muir, Noldeke, 
liodwell, etc. 



ISLAM. 291 

Islam neither more nor less than Judaism as adapted to 
Arabia — plus the apostleship of Jesus and Mohammed. 
Nay, we verily believe that a great deal of such Chris- 
tianity as has found its way into the Koran, has found it 
through Jewish channels. 

We shall speak of these things in due season. Mean^ 
time, we would turn for a moment to certain mediaeval 
Jewish opinions both on Christianity and Islam, which 
will probably astonish our readers. They belong to very 
high authorities of the Judaeo-Arabic Dispersion in Spain: 
Maimuni, generally called Maimonides, and Jehuda Al- 
Hassan ben Halevi. The former, at the close of his great 
"Digest of the Jewish Law," fearlessly speaks of Christ 
and Mohammed as heralds of the final Messianic times. 
In filling the world with the message of the Messiah, with 
the words of Scripture and its precepts, they have, he says, 
caused these exalted notions and sacred words to spread 
to the furthest ends of the earth. The latter — sweet sing- 
er as well as great philosopher — wrote a book, in Arabic, 
called "Kusari," wherein a Jew, a Christian, and a Mo- 
hammedan, are made to defend and to explain their re- 
spective creeds before the King of the Chazars — the king 
of the country now called the Crimea — who, in the tenth 
century of our era, had, together with his whole people, 
embraced Judaism. The Jewish speaker compares the 
religion founded by Moses to a seed-corn which, apparent- 
ly dissolved into its elements, is lost to sight; while in 
reality it assimilates the elements around and throws off 



292 APPENDIX. 

its own husk. And in the glorious end, both it and the 
things around will grow up together even as one tree, 
whose fruit is the Messianic time. The concise description 
of Islam which the author puts into the mouth of the Mo- 
hammedan interlocutor is so fair and correct that it might 
stand at the beginning of a religious Mohammedan com- 
pendium. 

But in this they were but the exponents of the real feel- 
ing of the Synagogue from the earliest times, on this mat- 
ter. For, startling as it may seem, what we are wont to 
consider the emphatically modem idea of the " three 
Semitic creeds" — being by their fundamental unity on 
the one hand, and their varying supplementary dogmas 
on the other, apparently intended to bring all humanity 
within the pale of Monotheism — is found foreshadowed 
in those Talmudical oracles. They who composed them 
were truly called the Wise, the Disciples of the Wise. 
They did not prophesy ; they would have shrunk with 
horror from a like notion; but w T ith a heart full of poetry 
they often combined marvelo-us keenness of philosophical 
insight. And thus while they develop the minutest legal 
points with an incisive logical sharpness, while they keep 
our imagination spell-bound by their gorgeous lore, they at 
times amaze us with views apparently wide apart from 
their subject; but views so large, so enlightened, so "ad- 
vanced," that we have to read again and again to believe 
— even as the age of the Renaissance was amazed and 
startled when the long-buried song and wisdom of the 
Antique were made to open their divine lips anew. 



ISLAM. 293 

Parallel with those transparent allegories of all man- 
kind being addressed on Sinai; or those others of "God's 
name being inscribed in seventy languages on Moses's won- 
derstaff ;" or of " Joshua engraving the Law in seventy 
stones on the other side of the Jordan ;" there runs the 
clear and distinct idea of certain apostolic Monotheistic 
nations or phases. They are three in number. These 
three are our three " Semitic creeds." 

We shall, out of the many Variants that in more or less 
poetical guise embody this thought, echoed and re-echoed 
by the highest authorities of the Synagogue, and as often 
used and misused in fierce mediaeval Judseo-Mohammedan 
controversy, select what we consider the very oldest. It 
is found in the Sifre, a work, although of somewhat later 
redaction, anterior to the Mishnah, and often quoted in the 
Talmud as one of its own oldest sources. 

A homiletic exposition of Numbers and Deuteronomy, 
it lovingly tarries at the last chapter — Moses's parting 
blessing. The Tanchuma introduces this chapter by the 
striking remark that while through all other blessings re- 
corded in the Pentateuch — of Noah, of Abraham, of Isaac, 
of Jacob — there always rings some discord, some one harsh 
note, whereby the bliss foretold is concentrated upon some 
special heads to the exclusion of others, the dying song of 
Moses is one unbroken strain of harmony. Its golden 
blessings flow for all alike, and there is none to stand 
aside, weeping. And the Si/re, in a kind of paraphrase 
of the special verses themselves, literally continues as fol- 



294 APPENDIX. 

lows : " ' The Lord came from Sinai? that means the 
Law was given in Hebrew ; ' and rose up from Se'lr unto 
them,' that means it was also given in Greek (Humi) ; 
'and he shineth forth from Mount Par an? that means 
in Arabic" . . . 

There is a fourth language added — " ' He came with the 
thousands of Saints/ and this means Aramaic" Even 
granting the typical nature of the three geographical 
names alluded to — and it is not to be denied that Sinai 
and Seir are constantly used for Israel and Esau-Edom- 
Rorne, while Faran plainly stands for Arabia, whether or 
not it be the name of the mountains around Mecca as con- 
tended — the connection of the "thousands of Saints" with 
Aram does not seem quite clear at first sight — unless it 
mean Ezra's Puritans. What, however, is quite clear by 
this time is this, that " Aramaic " is typical of Judaism ; 
that Judaism which has supplanted both Hebraism and 
Israelitism, and which, having passed through its most 
vital reformation under Aryan, notably Zoroastrian aus- 
pices, during the Exile, subsequently stood at the cradle 
both of Christianity and Mohammedanism. Aramaic rep- 
resents that phase during and since the Babylonish cap- 
tivity whose legitimate and final expression is the " Oral 
Law," the Talmud : that Talmud, which with one hand — 
like those Puritans — reared iron walls around the sacred 
precincts of Faith and Nationality, and with the other laid 
out these inmost precincts with flowery mazes, of exotic 
colors, of bewildering fragrance — "a sweet-smelling savor 
unto the Lord." 



ISLAM, 295 

When the Talmud was completed (finally gathered in, 
Ave mean — not composed), the Koran was begun. Post 
hoc — propter hoc. We do not intend to convey the notion 
that the Talmudical authors had foretold the Koran. On 
the contrary, had they known its nature they would scarce- 
ly have bestowed upon it the term of " Revelation." But 
here is the passage : a wondrous sign of their clear ap- 
preciation of the elements of culture represented by the 
nations and clans around them. Hellas-Rome and Arabia 
appeared to them the fittest preparatory mediums or pre- 
liminary stages of this great Sinaitic mission of Faith and 
Culture. 

Post hoc — propter hoc. The Hebrew, the Greek, the 
Aramaic phases of Monotheism, the Old Testament, the 
New Testament, the Targum, and the Talmud, were each 
in their sphere fulfilling their behests. The times were 
ripe for the Arabic phase.* 

In the year 571 w T as born Mohammed — or he who, to- 
gether with his mission, appears with that significant name 
of the " Praised, 55 under which he was supposed to have 
been foretold in the Old and New Testament. f It was 

* [We must protest against the construction put upon this passage by- 
some of our contemporaries. The historical sequence of events is merely 
described ; it was not our object to discuss the claims and authority of 
Judaism, Christianity, and Islamism ; and it is a complete misrepresenta- 
tion of our words to assert that we placed the three religions upon an 
equal footing. — Note by the Author to the Second Edition.] 

f There exist very grave doubts as to whether this really was the Proph- 
et's name. Originally called Kothan, he is held to have first adopted 
the epithet of Mohammed, either together with his mission or, perhaps, 



296 APPENDIX. 

but a few years after the death of that Byzantine Louis 
XIV., Justinian, who had aimed at creating one State, one 
Law, one Church throughout the world ; who had laid the 
first interdict upon the Talmud ; who most significantly 
gathered building materials from all the famous " hea- 
then " temples — of Baal ofBaalbeck and Pallas of Athens, 
of " Isis and Osiris " of Heliopolis and the great Diana of 
Ephesus, therewith to reconstruct the Hagia Sophia at 
Constantinople — the same Hagia Sophia wherein now the 
grave and learned doctors cease not to expound the Koran. 
In those days Arabia expected her own prophet. The 
Jews in Arabia are said to have watched for his appear- 
ance. 

Few religions have been founded in plain day like Islam, 
which now counts its believers by more than a hundred 
millions, and which enlarges its domain from day to day, 
unaided. Most clearly and sharply does Mohammed stand 

not even before the Flight. It is not easy to fix upon the exact passages, 
either in the Old or New Testament, to which the Prophet himself alludes, 
as foretelling him by name : as Mohammed in the Old, and as Ahmad, 
another form of the same name, in the New. Regarding the latter, prob- 
ably John's Paraclete (amended by some into 7repiK\vr6e), which in Arabic 
might be Ahmad, is meant. As to the Old Testament, the Vulgate — that 
most faithful receptacle of Jewish tradition, as transmitted to Jerome by 
his Rabbies — will best help us. There is no doubt that, with that root 
harnad there is generally mixed up some kind of Messianic notion in the 
eyes of Targumists and Haggadists. And when in Haggai ii., 8, we find 
the word "Hemdah"=a precious thing, rendered, against grammar and 
context, by " Desideratus — omnium gentium" we may be sure that the 
Synagogue did look upon this passage as Messianic, though there be no 
very direct evidence extant. 



ISLAM. 297 

out against the horizon of history. Those who knew him, 
not for hours or clays or weeks, but from birth to death, 
almost during his whole life, count not by units or dozens, 
but by thousands upon thousands, whose names and whose 
biographies have been collected ; and his witnesses were 
men in the fullness and ripeness of age and wisdom, some 
his bitterest enemies. No religious code extant bears so 
emphatically and clearly the marks and traces of one mind, 
from beginning to end, as the Koran, though, as to mate- 
rials and contents, there is, as we have hinted already, a 
passing strange tale to tell. It will therefore behoove us, 
in order that w T e may better understand how Mohammed 
made these materials entirely his own, how he moulded 
and shaped, and added unto them, to try and realize first 
the man himself and the vicissitudes that influenced his 
mind — its workings and its stragglings, its despairs and 
its triumphs. 

This shall be done very briefly. And, though it seems 
next to impossible to separate the man from his book, we 
shall yet attempt to separate them. True, the more than 
twenty years which its composition occupied are em- 
balmed in it with all their strange changes of fortune, 
with their terrors and visions, their curses and their pray- 
ers, their bulletins and their field-orders. The Koran does 
indeed illustrate and explain its author's life so well that 
hitherto every biographer (and there have been many and 
great ones) has suggested, in accordance with his own 
views, a different arrangement of that book. In its pres- 

N2 



298 APPENDIX. 

ent shape a sheer chaos as regards chronological or logical 
order of chapters and even verses, it will lend itself ad- 
mirably to all and any arrangement. You may work it, 
as it were, backward and forward. Something is supposed 
to have happened at a certain time : here is a verse look- 
ing like a vague allusion to it ; therefore the verse belongs 
to that period, and confirms the previously doubtful fact. 
Here is a verse which alludes to some event or other of 
which nothing is known, and the event is solemnly reg- 
istered, a fitting date is given to it, and the verse finds its 
chronological place. But we have nothing to arrange, and 
therefore, though it be less easy and less picturesque to 
consider the author and the book as independently as may 
be, we do so at Mohammed's express desire as it were, and 
in bare justice to him. He wishes the Koran to be judged 
by its own contents. " Hie Rhodus, hie salta," he seems 
to cry. The Book is his sign, his miracle, his mission. His 
own story is another matter. And without preconceived 
opinions — either as panegyrist or as Advocatus Diaboli — 
shall we try to tell it, and then be unfettered in our story 
of the Book. If we make use of the "Sunnah" for our 
purpose, no one will blame us. This Midrash of Moham- 
medanism, as we should call those traditional records of 
the Prophet's doings and sayings, both in the legendary 
and juridical sense of the word, has, albeit in exalted tones 
and colors often, told us much of his outer and inner life. 
Used with the same patient care with which all documents 
are used by the impartial historian, it yields precious in- 
formation. 



ISLAM. 299 

We have reason to discard much of what has long been 
repeated about Mohammed's early life. All we know, or 
think w T e know now for certain, is that he lost his father 
before his birth, and his mother when he was six years of 
age. His grandfather who had adopted him died two 
years later, and his poor uncle Abu Talib then took charge 
of him. Though belonging to a good enough family, the 
Koreish, though sickly^ subject to epilepsy, Mohammed 
had early to work for his living. He tended the flocks 
— even as Moses, David, and all prophets had done, he 
used to say. " Pick me out the blackest of these berries" 
he cried once at Medina, when, prophet and king, he saw 
some people pass with berries of the wild shrub Arak. 
"Pick me out the blackest, for they are sweet — even -such 
was I w r ont to gather wheia I. tended the flock of Mecca at 
Ajyad." But by the Meccans tending of flocks was con- 
sidered a very low occupation indeed. In his twenty- 
fourth year, a rich widow of Mecca, Chadija, about thirty- 
eight years of age, and twice before married, engaged his 
services. He accompanied her caravans on several jour- 
neys, probably as a camel-driver. Of a sudden she offered 
him her hand, and obtained the consent of her father by 
intoxicating him. She bore Mohammed two sons, one of 
whom he called after a popular idol, and four daughters. 
Both boys died early. 

This is the whole story of Mohammed's outer life pre- 
vious to the assumption of his mission. The ever-repeated 
tale of his having accidentally been chosen, in his thirty- 



300 APPENDIX. 

fifth year, as arbiter in a quarrel about the replacing of 
the Black Stone in the Kaaba, is at least very questiona- 
ble, as are his repeated travels in Syria with his uncles, to 
which we shall return anent a certain monk who appears 
in many aliases, and who proves to be more or less a myth. 

Mohammed's personal appearance, a matter of some im- 
port, chiefly in a prophet, is almost feature by feature thus 
portrayed by the best authenticated traditionists : 

He was of middle height, rather thin, but broad of 
shoulders, wide of chest, strong of bone and muscle. His 
head was massive, strongly developed. Dark hair, slight- 
ly curled, flowed in a dense mass down almost to his 
shoulders. Even in advanced age. it was sprinkled by 
only about twenty gray hairs — produced by the agonies 
of the " Revelations." His face was oval-shaped, slightly 
tawny of color. Fine, long, arched eyebrow r s were di- 
vided by a vein which throbbed visibly in moments of 
passion. Great, black, restless eyes shone out from under 
long, heavy eyelashes. His nose was large, slightly aqui- 
line. His teeth, upon w T hich he bestowed great care, were 
well set, dazzling white. A full beard framed his manly 
face. His skin was clear and soft, his complexion " red 
and white," his hands were as "silk and satin" — even as 
those of a woman. His step was quick and elastic, yet 
firm, and as that of one " who steps from a high to a low 
place." In turning his face he would also turn his full 
body. His whole gait and presence were dignified and 
imposing. His countenance was mild and pensive. His 



ISLAM. 301 

laugh was rarely more than a smile. " Oh, my little son!" 
reads one tradition, " hadst thou seen him, thou wouldst 
have said thou hadst seen a sun rising." "I," says an- 
other witness, " saw him in a moonlight night, and some- 
times I looked at his beauty and sometimes I looked at 
the moon, and his dress was striped with red, and he w T as 
brighter and more beautiful to me than the moon." 

In his habits he was extremely simple, though he be- 
stowed great care on his person. His eating and drinking, 
his dress and his furniture, retained, even w T hen he had 
reached the fullness of power, their almost primitive nat- 
ure. He made a point of giving away all " superfluities." 
The only luxuries he indulged in w r ere, besides arms, which 
he highly prized, certain yellow boots, a present from the 
Negus of Abyssinia. Perfumes, however, he loved pas- 
sionately, being most sensitive of smell. Strong drinks 
he abhorred. 

His constitution was extremely delicate. He was ner- 
vously afraid of bodily pain — he would sob and roar under 
it. Eminently unpractical in all common things of life, 
he was gifted with mighty powers of imagination, eleva- 
tion of mind, delicacy and refinement of feeling. " He is 
more modest than a virgin behind her curtain," it was 
said of him. He was most indulgent to his inferiors, and 
would never allow his aw T kward little page to be scolded, 
whatever he did. "Ten years," said Anas, his servant, 
" was I about the Prophet, and he never said as much as 
6 uff' to me." He was very affectionate toward his family. 



302 APPENDIX. 

One of his boys died on his breast, in the smoky house of 
the nurse, a blacksmith's wife. He was very fond of chil- 
dren. He would stop them in the streets and pat their 
little cheeks. He never struck any one in his life. The 
worst expression he ever made use of in conversation was, 
" What has come to him ? — may his forehead be darkened 
with mud !" When asked to curse some one, he replied, 
"I have not been sent to curse, but to be a mercy to man- 
kind." " He visited the sick, followed any bier he met, 
accepted the invitation of a slave to dinner, mended his 
own clothes, milked his goats, and waited upon himself," 
relates summarily another tradition. He never first with- 
drew his hand out of another man's palm, and turned not 
before the other had turned. His hand, we read else- 
where — and traditions like these give a good index of 
what the Arabs expected their prophet to be — was the 
most generous, his breast the most courageous, his tongue 
the most truthful; he was the most faithful protector of 
those he protected, the sweetest and most agreeable in 
conversation ; those who saw him were suddenly filled 
with reverence, those who came near him loved him, they 
who described him would say, " I have never seen his like 
either before or after." He was of great taciturnity, but 
when he spoke it was with emphasis and deliberation, and 
no one could ever forget what he said. He was, however, 
very nervous and restless withal, often low-spirited, down- 
cast as to heart and eyes. Yet he would at times sud- 
denly break through those broodings, become gay, talka- 



islam. 303 

tive, jocular, chiefly among his own. He would then de- 
light in telling amusing little stories, fairy tales, and the 
like. He would romp with the children, and play with 
their toys — as, after his first wife's death, he was wont to 
play with the dolls his new baby-wife had brought into 
his house. 

The common cares of life had been taken from him by 
the motherly hand of Chadija; but heavier cares seemed 
now to darken his soul, to weigh down his whole being. 
As time wore on the gloom and misery of his heart be- 
came more and more terrible. He neglected his house- 
hold matters, and fled all men. " Solitude became a pas- 
sion to him," the traditions record. He had now passed 
the meridian of his life. No one seemed to heed the 
brooder, no one stretched out the hand of sympathy to 
him. He had nothing in common with the rest, and he 
was left to himself. 

Much chronological discussion has arisen as to the date 
of the event of which we are going to speak. So much, 
however, seems certain, that Mohammed was at least forty 
years of age when he went, according to the custom of 
some of his countrymen, to spend the Rajab, the month 
of universal armistice among the ancient Arabs, on Mount 
Hira, an hour's walk from Mecca. This mountain, now 
called Mount of Light, consists of a huge barren rock, 
torn by cleft and hollow ravine, standing out solitary in 
the full white glare of the desert sun, shadowless, flower- 
less, without well or rill. On this rock, in a small, dark 



-/. 



304 APPENDIX. 

cave, Mohammed lived alone, and spent his days and 
his nights, according to unanimous tradition, in "Tahan- 
nothP 

The weary guesses that have been made from the days 
of these very traditions to our own, as to the meaning and 
derivation of this word, can not be told. It has been put 
on the rack by lexicographers, grammarians, commenta- 
tors, translators, investigators, of all hues and ages, and, 
we are sorry to add, with no satisfactory result. To the 
general meaning the context gave some cue, but the ety- 
mology of the word, and its technical signification, have 
remained a mystery, notwithstanding many various read- 
ings of its single letters suggested by sheer despair. One 
of the latest and greatest investigators, Sprenger, num- 
bers it as one of the most " indigestible morsels" among 
the many strange and obsolete words that occur in con- 
nection with Mohammed and the Koran. 

We do not intend to do more than throw out surges- 
tions — though very carefully weighed — for we must, to 
our regret, leave all our philological scaffoldings behind. 
Regarding this most mysterious word, we have a notion 
that it might be explained, like scores of other tough mor- 
sels in the Koran, by the Jewish, Hebrew, or Aramaic par- 
lance of the period, as it is preserved most fortunately in 
the Talmud, the Targum, the Midrash. The word Tahan- 
noth need not be emendated into Tahannof, or any other 
weird form, to agree with its traditional meaning, because 
we think that it is only the Hebrew word TehinnotJi^ which 



islam. 305 

occurs bodily in the Bible, and means "Prayers, Supplica- 
tions." The change of vowels is exactly the same as that 
from the Hebrew Gehinnom (New Testament Gehenna) 
to the Koranic Johannam. Among the Jews the word 
became technical for a certain class of devotional prayers, 
customary, together with fastings, throughout the month 
preceding the New- Year's Day. It is known more gen- 
erally as a term for private devotions throughout the 
year, chiefly for pious women. This, however, only by 
the way. 

To devotions and asceticism, then, Mohammed gave 
himself up in his wild solitude. And after a time there 
came to him dreams " resplendent like the rosy dawn." 
When he left his cave to walk about on his rocky fastness, 
the wild herbs that grew in the clefts would bend their 
heads, and the stones scattered in his way would cry, 
"Salam ! Hail, O Prophet of God !" And horrified, not 
daring to look about him, he fled back into his cave. That 
same cave has now become a station for the Holy Pilgrim- 
age, and on it that early predecessor of our Burckhardts 
and Burtons, " Hajj Joseph Pitts, of Exon," the runaway 
sailor boy, delivered himself of the judgment that " he had 
been in the cave, and observed that it was not at all beau- 
tified, at which he admired." 

Suddenly, in the middle of the night — the "blessed night 
Al Kadar," as the Koran has it — " and who will make thee 
understand what the nio-ht Al Kadar is? That night Al 
Kadar, which is better than a thousand months .... which 



306 APPENDIX. 

bringeth peace and blessings till the rosy dawn " — in the 
middle of that night, Mohammed awoke from his sleep, 
and he heard a voice. Twice it called, urging, and twice 
he struggled and waived its call But he was pressed 
sore, " as if a fearful weight had been laid upon him." He 
thought his last hour had come. And for the third time 
the voice called — 

"Cry!" 

And he said, " What shall I cry ?" 

Came the answer : " Cry — in the name of thy Lord !" . . . 

And these, according to w T ell-nigh unanimous tradition, 
followed by nearly every ancient and modern authority, 
are the first words of the Koran. Our readers will find 
them in the ninety-sixth chapter of that Book, to w T hich 
they have been banished by the Redactors. 

We hasten to add that when we said that the above 
sentence would be found in the ninety-sixth chapter of the 
Koran, we were not quite accurate. The word w T hich w T e 
have ventured to translate Cry they will find rendered in 
as many different ways as there were translators, investi- 
gators, commentators, old and new. They will find Re- 
cite, Preach, Read, Proclaim, Call out, Read the Scriptures 
— namely, of the Jews and Christians— and a weary vari- 
ety of other meanings which certainly belong to the word, 
though the greater part of them is of obviously later date 
and utterly out of the question in this case. 

Our reasons for deviating from these time-honored ver- 
sions were of various kinds. In the first place, the Ara- 



islam. 307 

bic root in question is identical with our own, and in this 
primitive root lie hidden all other significations. "Cry" 
is one of those very few onomatopoetic words still com- 
mon to both Semitic and Indo-European. Its significa- 
tions are indeed manifold ; from the vague sound given 
forth by bird or tree, as in Sanskrit, to our English usage 
of silent weeping ; from the Hebrew " deep crying unto 
deep " to the technical Aramaic " reading the Scriptures " 
— in contradistinction to "reading the Mishnah" — from 
the weird German Schrei to the Greek herald's solemn 
proclamation — it is always the same fundamental root: 
biliteral or triliteral. 

Secondly, because the principal words of this tradition 
are startlingly identical — another fact not hitherto no- 
ticed, as far as we are aware — with a certain passage in 
Isaiah : " The Voice said Cry, and I said, What shall I 
cry ?" — a passage in which no one has yet translated the 
leading verb by Recite, Read, Read the Scriptures, though 
there was never, a doubt as to whether Isaiah knew the 
Scriptures and could read, while Mohammed distinctly 
denied being a " scholar." 

And, thirdly, because from this root is also derived the 
word Koran. Derived : for it was in the very special 
Jewish sense of Mikra, Scripture, that Mohammed gave 
that name to every single fragment of that book, until it 
became, even as the word Mishnah, its collective and gen- 
eral name. 

We now resume our recital of that first revelation and 



308 APPENDIX. 

its immediate consequences, as tradition has preserved it. 
It is of moment. 

When the voice had ceased to speak, telling how from 
minutest be<nnnino;s man had been called into existence 
and lifted up by understanding and knowledge of the 
Lord, who is most beneficent, and who fty the pen had re- 
vealed that which men did not know, Mohammed awoke 
from his trance and felt as if " a book " had been written 
in his heart. A great trembling came upon him, so that 
his whole body shook, and the perspiration ran down his 
body. He hastened home to his wife, and said, " Oh, Cha- 
dija ! what has happened to me !" He lay down, and she 
watched by him. When he recovered from his paroxysm 
he said, "Oh, Chadija ! he, of whom one would not have 
believed it [meaning himself], has become either a sooth- 
sayer [Kahin*] or one possessed [by Djins] — mad." She 
replied, " God is my protection, O Abu-'l-Kasim ! [a name 
of Mohammed derived from one of his boys], He will sure- 
ly not let such a thing happen unto thee, for thou speakest 
the truth, dost not return evil for evil, keepest faith, art 
of good life, and kind to thy relations and friends. And 
neither art thou a talker abroad in the bazaars. What 
has befallen thee ? Hast thou seen aught terrible ?" 
Mohammed replied, "Yes. 5 ' And he told her what he 



* The Hebrew " Cohen," priest, in a deteriorated sense like the Ger- 
man "Pfaffe." In the time of Mohammed it meant a low fortune-teller, 
an ever-ready interpreter of dreams, who had, like Daniel, to find out both 
the dreams and their solutions. 



islam. 309 

had seen. Whereupon she answered and said, "Rejoice, 
O dear husband, and be of good cheer. He in whose 
hands stands Chadija's life is my witness that thou wilt 
be the prophet of this people." Then she arose and went 
to her cousin Waraka, who was old and blind, and " knew 
the Scriptures of the Jews and Christians." When she 
told him what she had heard, he cried out, " Koddus, 
Koddus ! — Holy, Holy ! Verily this is the JVamus which 
came to Moses. He will be the prophet of his people. 
Tell him this. Bid him be of brave heart." 

We must here interpose for a moment. This Waraka 
has given rise to much and angry discussion — chiefly as 
to his " conversion." He was long supposed to have been 
first an idolater, then a Jew, finally a Christian. It has 
been shown, however, by recent investigations, that what- 
ever he was at first, he certainly lived and died a Jew. 
To our mind this one sentence goes a long way toward 
settling the point. Koddits is simply the Arabicized 
Hebrew Kadosh (Holy). And while we need not prove 
that a Christian would scarcely have used this exclama- 
tion (any more than he w r ould have spoken of the " Na- 
mus"), we are reminded of the story in the Midrash of 
the man whose heart was sore within him for that- he 
could neither read the Scripture nor the Mishnah. And 
one day when he stood in the synagogue, and the precen- 
tor reached that part of the liturgy in which God's holy 
name is sanctified, this man lifted up his voice aloud and 
cried out with all his main: "Kadosh! Kadosh! Ka- 



310 APPENDIX. 

dosh!" (Holy! Holy! Holy!) And when they asked 
him what made him cry out thus, he said, " I have not 
been deemed worthy to read the Scriptures, or the Mish- 
nah, and now the moment has come when I may sanctify 
God, shall I not lift up my voice aloud ?" " It did not 
last a year, or two, or three," the legend adds, " but it so 
fell out that this man became a great and mighty general, 
and a founder of a colony within the Roman empire." 

As to the "Namas" it is an hermaphrodite in words. It 
is Arabic, but also Greek. That it is Talmudical, need w r e 
say it ? It is in the first instance vo/nog. Law, that which 
"by custom and common consent" has become so. In 
Talmudical phraseology it stands for the Thorah or Re- 
vealed Law. In Arabic it further means one who com- 
municates a secret message. And all these different sig- 
nifications w^ere conveyed by Waraka to Mohammed. 
The messenger and the message, both divine, had come 
together, even as Moses had been instructed in the Law 
by a special angel — not, as former commentators, to save 
Waraka' s Christianity, used to explain, because to Mo- 
hammed, as to Moses, a new Law was given, while Christ 
came to confirm what had been given before. 

Not long after this the two men met in the street of 
Mecca. And Waraka said, "I swear by him in whose 
hand Waraka's life is, God has chosen thee to be the 
prophet of this people. The greatest 'JVamus has come 
to thee. They will call thee a liar; they will persecute 
thee, they will banish thee, they will fight against thee. 



ISLAM. 311 

Oh, that I could live to those days ! I would fight for 
thee." And he kissed him on his forehead. The Prophet 
went home, and the words he had heard were a great 
comfort to him, and diminished his anxiety. 

After this Mohammed, in awe and trembling, waited 
for other visions and revelations. But none came; and 
the old horrible doubts and suspicions crept over his soul. 
He went up to Mount Hira again — this time to commit 
suicide. But, as often as he approached the precipice, lo, 
he beheld Gabriel at the end of the horizon whithersoever 
he turned, who said to him, "I am Gabriel, and thou art 
Mohammed, the Prophet of God." And he stood as en- 
tranced, unable to move backward or forward, until anx- 
ious Chadija sent out men to seek him. 

We must interrupt the course of the story for a mo- 
ment respecting this " Voice," which is called in the Ko- 
ran, Gabriel, or the Holy Ghost. We have on a previous 
occasion spoken of the strange metamorphoses of angels 
and demons, as they migrated from India to Babylonia, 
and from Babylonia to Judaaa. Their further migration 
to Mecca did not produce much change, since the process 
of Semitizino; them and making them subservient to Mon- 
otheism had been wrought already by the Talmud. Yet 
this strange identification of Gabriel with the Holy Ghost 
which we find here is a problem not fully to be solved, 
either by the Talmud or the Zend Avesta. 

The Holy Ghost, an expression of most common occur- 
rence in the Haggadah, is thus summarily explained by 



312 APPENDIX. 

the Talmud — as an emphatic answer probably to the pop- 
ular tendency of taking transcendental terms in a con- 
crete sense. " With ten names," says the Talmud, " is 
the Holy Ghost named in Scripture. They are — Parable, 
Allegory, Enigma, Speech, Sentence, Light, Command, Vi- 
sion, Prophecy." In the Angelic Hierarchy of the Tal- 
mud it is Michael (Vohumano), and not Gabriel, who takes 
first rank. He stands to the right of the Throne, Gabriel 
to the left ; he represents Grace ; Gabriel, stern Justice ; 
and though they are both intrusted with watching over 
God's people, yet it is Michael who stands forth to fight 
for them, who brings them good tidings, and who, as 
heavenly High -Priest, "offers up the souls of the right- 
eous upon God's Altar." Yet he is often accompanied by 
Gabriel, who is, be it observed, particularly active in the 
life of Abraham. It is he who saves Abraham from the 
fiery furnace into which Nimrod had cast him; in the 
message of Isaac's birth he is one of the three "men," and 
his place is to Michael's right hand. In all other respects 
he is the exact counterpart of the Persian Qraosho, and 
his principal office is that of revenging and punishing 
evil, while he acts as a merciful genius to the good and 
elect. Hence, probably, he became in later Persian my- 
thology, as well as in the Talmud, the Divine Messenger. 
He is thus replete with all knowledge, and — alone of all 
angels — is versed in all human tongues. Islam has made 
a few transparently " tendencious " changes. Gabriel 
here stands to the right hand of the throne, and Michael 



ISLAM. 313 

to the left, i. 6., the former becomes the Angel of Mercy, 
and the latter that of Punishment. Omar, it is said, once 
went into a Jewish academy and asked the Jews about 
Gabriel's office. He, they mockingly answered, is our 
enemy; he betrays all our secrets to Mohammed, and he 
and Michael are always at war with each other — an an- 
swer which, taken seriously by Omar, so shocked him that 
he cried out, " Why, you are more unbelieving than the 
Himyarites !" But might this strange identification of 
Gabriel and the Holy Ghost possibly be accounted for by 
the fact that the mystic office with regard to the birth of 
Christ, ascribed to the Holy Ghost by the Church, is as- 
cribed in Islam to Gabriel also, who, as in the New Testa- 
ment, announces the message to Mary, and that thus the 
two have become fully identified in the minds of the tra- 
ditionists ? 

We have left Mohammed in the terror-stricken state 
of a mind conscious of its mission, and vainly trying to 
struggle against it. The grim, lonely darkness within, the 
horrible dread lest it all be but mockery and self-decep- 
tion, or " the Devil's prompting ;" the inability of utter- 
ing, save in a few wild, rhapsodic sounds, that message 
which is silently and agonizingly growing into shape — 
and death seems the only refuge and salvation — who shall 
describe it? It was through these phases of a soul strug- 
gling between Heaven and Hell that Mohammed went in 
those days, and the thought of suicide came temptingly 
near. But, lo ! Gabriel on the edge of the horizon, crying : 

O 



314 APPENDIX. 

I am Gabriel, and thou art Mohammed, God's Messenger. 
. . . Fear not ! 

It is not easy to say how long that state of doubt and 
terror lasted. Tradition, wildly diverging here, is, of 
course, of little use. Probably he was not quite free from 
it to the day of his death. But, by degrees, and as he 
no longer had to carry that dread burden in his lonely 
heart, he gathered strength. His confidence in himself 
and in his mission rose. No demoniac, no contemptible 
soothsayer, no possessed madman he — the voice within 
urged. And at times a blissful exultation took the place 
of the former horror. His heart throbs with grateful joy. 
" By the midday splendor, and by the stilly night," he 
cries, " the Lord does not reject him, and will not forsake 
him, and the future shall be better than the past. Has he 
not found him an orphan and given him a home, found 
him astray and guided him into the straight path, found 
him so poor and made him so rich ?" " Wherefore," he 
adds, " do not thou oppress the orphan, neither repel thou 
him who asketh of thee — but declare aloud the bounties 
of thy Lord !" . . . 

And the revelations now came one after the other 
without intermission during a space of more than twenty 
years — revelations, the central sun of which was the doc- 
trine of God's Unity, Monotheism, of which he, Moham- 
med, was the bearer to his own people. 

Yet these revelations did not come in visions bright, 
transcendent, exalted. They came ghastly, weird, most 



ISLAM, 315 

horrible. After long, solitary broodings, a something used 
to move Mohammed, all of a sudden, with frightful vehe- 
mence. He " roared like a camel," his eyes rolled and 
glowed like red coals, and on the coldest day terrible 
perspirations would break out all over his body. When 
the terror ceased, it seemed to him as if he had heard 
bells ringing, " the sound whereof seemed to rend him to 
pieces" — as if he had heard the voice of a man — as if 
he had seen Gabriel — or as if words had bee?i written in 
his heart. Such was the agony he endured that some of 
the verses revealed to him well-nigh made his hair turn 
white. 

Mohammed was epileptic, and vast ingenuity and mid- 
ical knowledge have been lavished upon this point, as ex- 
planatory of Mohammed's mission and success. We, for 
our own part, do not think that epilepsy ever made a man 
appear a prophet to himself, or even to the people of the 
East ; or, for the matter of that, inspired him w r ith the 
like heart-moving words and glorious pictures. Quite the 
contrary. It was taken as a sign of demons within— de- 
mons, " Devs," devils, to whom all manner of diseases 
were ascribed throughout the antique world, in Phoenicia, 
in Greece, in Rome, in Persia, and among the lower classes 
in Judaea after the Babylonian Exile. The Talmud, w T hich 
denies a concrete Satan, or rather resolves him rationally 
into "passion," "remorse," and "death" — stages corre- 
sponding to his being "Seducer," "Accuser," and "Angel 
of Death" — speaks of these demons as hobgoblins, or spe- 



316 APPENDIX. 

cial diseases, and inveighs in terms of contempt against 
the "exorcisms" in vogue* in Judaea about the period of 
the birth of Christianity. Those " possessed " loved soli- 
tary places, chiefly cemeteries ; they tore their garments, 
and were altogether beyond the pale. On the special 
nature of the possessing demons, the " Shedim " of the 
Talmud, the " Devils" of the New Testament, the Jin, or 
Genii, of the Koran, as different from and yet alike to the 
Devas, and as forming the intermediate beings between 
men and angels, as in Plato (Sympos.), we may yet have 
to speak. That they were all " pure, holy, everlasting 
angels from the beginning," and only came to be degrad- 
ed (as were the Devas by " Zoroastrianism," and the gods 
of Hellas and Rome by Christianity) into -wicked angels 
in the course of religious reformation or change — is un- 
questionable, even if the Book of Enoch did not state it 
expressly. They are "fallen angels" — fallen through 
pride, envy, lust. The two angels Shamchazai (Asai) and 
Azael (Uziel) of the Targum, the Midrash, and the Koran 
(Marut and Harut), are thrown from heaven because of 

* True, Simon ben Yochai, the fabulous author of the Zohar, to whose 
rather badly kept shrine at Merom, a few hours from Tiberias (where also 
Shammai and Hillel are believed to be buried), the Faithful of Palestine, 
and even of Persia and India, make their annual pilgrimage to this day, 
did once, and apparently with the approval of the authorities, drive out a 
devil from the Emperor's daughter at Rome. But then this devil had 
good-naturedly offered his services himself, and the object of Simon's em- 
bassy, the rescinding of an oppressive decree, was considered so praise- 
worthy in the main that these authorities rather shut their eyes to the 
performance. 



ISLAM. 317 

their desiring the daughters of man, even as Sammael him- 
self loses his most high estate, because he seduces Adam 
and Eve. True, there is a peculiar something supposed 
to inhere in epilepsy. The Greeks called it a sacred dis- 
ease. Bacchantic and chorybantic furor were God-in- 
spired stages. The Pythia uttered her oracles under the 
most distressing signs. Symptoms of convulsion were even 
needed as a sign of the divine mania or inspiration. But 
Mohammed did not utter any of his sayings while the 
paroxysm lasted. Clearly, distinctly, most consciously, 
did he dictate to his scribe what had come to him — for 
he could not write, according to his own account. But 
it may well be, and it speaks for Mohammed's thorough 
honesty, that he believed himself, in the very first stages, 
to have been " inspired " during his fits by Jin. Accord- 
ing to Zoroastrotalmudical notions, which had penetrated 
into Arabia, these Jin listened " behind the curtain " of 
heaven, and learned the things of the future. These they 
were then believed to communicate to the soothsayers and 
diviners. But it was dangerous eavesdropping enough. 
When the heavenly watchers perceived these curious 
goblins, they hurled arrows of fire at them — in which 
men saw falling stars. Mohammed soon, however, reject- 
ed this notion of "demoniac" inspiration : while from the 
Byzantines to Luther, and from Luther to Muir, it was the 
devil who prompted the Prophet. Muir has indeed insti- 
tuted several minute comparisons between Satan tempting 
Christ and Mohammed. Whereat Sprenger somewhat ir- 



318 APPENDIX. 

reverently observes, that since there be a devil, he must 
needs have something to do. 

Tempted as we feel, before we proceed to describe 
the mental and religious atmosphere around Mohammed 
when he came to proclaim " the faith of Abraham," that 
first bearer of the emphatically Semitic mission, to en- 
large upon that great question of the day, the mission of 
the Semitic races in general, we must confine ourselves to 
one or two points touching their religious development. 
A brilliant French savant has of late, in somewhat rash 
generalization, asserted that Monotheism is a Semitic in- 
stinct. On which another, one of the most profound 
scholars — since, alas ! dead — observed that the assertion 
w r as perfectly correct, if you exclude all the Semitic races 
save the Jews ; and these, it might be added, at a very 
late period indeed, notwithstanding all the teachings of 
Moses and the Prophets, not after a thousand judgments 
had come upon them, all the horrors of internecine war, 
misery, captivity, and exile. The Phoenicians were idola- 
ters, the Assyrians were idolaters, the Babylonians were 
idolaters, and the Arabs were idolaters. And yet, perhaps, 
the truth lies, as usual, in the middle. If, according to 
Schelling, who goes much further, a vague Monotheism is 
the basis of all religions, there certainly does seem to be 
an abstract idea of absolute power of rule and dominion 
hidden in the universal Semitic name of the All-Powerful 
Supreme God, to whom all the other natural powers, in 
their personified mystic guises, are subject, and in whom 



ISLAM. 319 

they, as it were, are absorbed. Baal, El, Elohim, Allah, 
Elion, denote not merely the Light, the bright Heaven, as 
Zeus, Jupiter (subject in his turn to Fate, or that "which 
had once been spoken"), but Might, Almightiness — abso- 
lute, despotic, that created and destroyed, did and undid 
according to its own tremendous Will alone, and by the 
side of which nothing else existed; while Jehovah-Jahve 
seems to point to the other stage and side of absolute Ex- 
istence, the Being from all times and for all times, the 
Ens, the First Cause. And what is especially character- 
istic of the Shemites is this, that while, as Jewish and 
Arabic tradition has it, the sons of Japhet (Indo - Ger- 
mans) are kings, and those of Ham slaves, the sons of 
Shem are prophets. A thousand times lulled into sweet 
dreams of beauty, they are aroused a thousand times by 
the wild cry of the Prophet in their midst, who points 
heavenward, "Behold who hath created all these !" But 
what is a Prophet ? In the Hebrew term Kabi^ which Is- 
lam adopted, there does not indeed appear to inhere that 
foretelling faculty with which from the time of the Sep- 
tuagint Ave are wont to connect it. For it is the Sep- 
tuagint which first translates it by TrpotprjrrjQ, foreteller; 
while others render it by "Inspired," or simply " Orator." 
The manifold equivalents used in the Bible, such as watch- 
man, seer, shepherd, messenger, one and all denote em- 
phatically the office of watching over the events, and of 
lifting up the voice of warning, of reproving, of encour- 
aging, before all the people at the proper hour. Hence the 



320 APPENDIX. 

Haggadah has been called " the prophetess of the Exile," 
though no Haggadist was ever considered " inspired." 
The Prophet was above all things considered as the pop- 
ular preacher and teacher, gifted with religious enthu- 
siasm, with an intense love of his people, and with divine 
power of speech: whence alone the possibility of prophet- 
ic schools. And most strikingly says the Midrash of Abra- 
ham that he was a Prophet, a JVaM, but not an "Astrolo- 
ger," one whose calling it is not to forecast, but one who 
lifts men's minds heavenward. In this sense — all tran- 
scendentalism apart — Mohammed might well be called a 
prophet even by Jews and Christians. 

We can but guess at the state of Arab belief and wor- 
ship before Mohammed. For though the Arabs enter the 
world's stage as long after the first joyous revelation of 
humanity in Hellenism as the Assyrians and Babylonians, 
not to speak of the Phoenicians, had entered it before, they 
have left us but little record of their doings in the period 
of "Ignorance " — as with proud humility they called the 
time before Islam. From what broken light is shed by a 
few forlorn rays, we may conclude this, that they wor- 
shiped — to use that vague word — the Hosts of Heaven, 
and that with this worship there was combined a partial 
belief in resurrection among some clans. Others, how- 
ever, seem to have ascribed every thing to " Nature," and 
to have denied a guiding Creator. We further find traces 
of an adoration of fetiches: bodily representatives of cer- 
tain influences to be avoided, feared, and conciliated, or 



ISLAM. 321 

to be loved and gratefully acknowledged. The Sun and 
the Moon, Jupiter and Venus, Canopus and Sirius and 
Mercury, had their stony mementos, their temples, their 
priests, and, be it well understood, the power of protect- 
ing those who fled to their altars. Herodotus speaks of 
the Arabs as worshiping only Dionysos (whom Strabo 
changes into Jupiter) and Urania, "whom they call" 
Orotal (probably Nur- Allah m God's light), and Alilat — a 
feminine form of Allah, the Phoenician Queen of Heaven, 
Tanith-Astarte. Of a worship of heroes in the form of 
statues there are vague traces, but so vague and so myth- 
ical that they can not be counted historical material. 
Trees and stones are further mentioned as objects of 
primitive Arab worship, and on this point Maimonides 
has given, as is his wont, clear and transparent explana- 
tions, into w T hich we can not, however, enter. Among 
the latter the famous Black Stone of the Kaaba, that 
primeval temple ascribed to Abraham, stands foremost; 
next we know of a White Stone (Al Lat), at Taif, still 
seen by Hamilton, and one or two more immovable tokens 
of some great event, such as the Shemites were wont to 
erect — Jacob, among others, at Bethel (the general Phoe- 
nician term for these stone erections) — mementos which 
the Pentateuch emphatically protests against: "For I 
am Jehovah, your God." Vaguer still are the records of 
the Oracle-Trees, one of which stood near Mecca, while 
the other, dedicated to Uzza, the Mighty Goddess, the 
Queen of Heaven, seems to have spread all over the land, 

02 



322 APPENDIX, 

with its due complement of priests and soothsayers, male 
and female. That there were the usual accompaniment 
of Lares and Penates, more or less coarse and bodily, such 
as always have been necessary for the herd, need not be 
added. Thus it is recorded of one tribe that they wor- 
shiped a piece of dough, which, compelled by hunger, 
they cheerfully ate up. Some, we said, did not believe in 
the resurrection. Some did; and therefore they tied a 
camel to a man's sepulchre, without providing it with 
any food. If it ran away, that man was everlastingly 
damned — and, be it observed here, that the Jews alone 
among the Shemites protested against everlasting dam- 
nation ; if not, its blackened bones would, on the day of 
judgment, form a handy and honorable conveyance to the 
abode of his bliss. The Phantoms of the Desert, the Fata 
Morgana, Angels and Demons, and the rest of embodied 
ideas or ideals, formed other objects of pious considera- 
tion, but only as intermediators with the great Allah. 
Long before Mohammed, the people were w T ont, in their 
distress, to pray at their pilgrimages to him alone, in this 
wise: "At thy service, O Allah ! There is no Being like 
unto thee, and if there be one, it is thou and not it that 
reigneth ;" and when asked what was the office of their 
idols, they would answer that they were intermediators 
— much as Roman Catholics in the lower strata revere 
Saints and their emblems. Let it not be forgotten also 
that the perpetuation of this pre-Islamic idolatry, if so 
we call it, was due to a great extent to political reasons. 



islam. 323 

The manifold sanctuaries and their incomes belonged to 
certain noble families and clans. 

So much for Heathenism. We have now to consid- 
er the two other popularly assumed agents in that re- 
ligious phase to which Mohammed has given its name, 
and which has changed the face of the world — Christian- 
ity and Judaism. 

It has long been the fashion to ascribe whatever was 
"good" in Mohammedanism to Christianity. We fear 
this theory is not compatible with the results of honest 
investigation. For of Arabian Christianity, at the time 
of Mohammed, the less said perhaps the better. By the 
side of it, as seen in the Koran — and this book alone 
shows it to us authentically as Mohammed saw it — even 
modern Amharic Christianity, of which we possess such 
astounding accounts, appears pure and exalted. And as, 
moreover, the monk Behira-Sergius-Georgius-Nestor, who 
is said to have instructed Mohammed, is a very intangi- 
ble person indeed, if he be not, as there is reason to be- 
lieve, actually a Jew; and as the several Syrian travels 
during which Mohammed is supposed to have been fur- 
ther inured into Christianity have to be taken cum grcmo, 
nothing: remains but his contact with a few freed Greek 
and Abyssinian slaves, who, having lived all their life 
among Arabians, could hardly boast of a very profound 
knowledge of the tenets and history of Christianity. We 
shall, therefore, not be surprised to see the Koran polem- 
izing against some such extraordinary notions as that of 



324 APPENDIX. 

Mary-Maryam, " the daughter of Irnran, the sister of Ha- 
run," being not only the mother of God, but forming a 
person in the Trinity ; or, on the other hand, to meet with 
the extraordinary legends from the apocryphal Gospel of 
the Infancy, and from the "Assumption" of Mary, as- 
cribed to John the Apostle himself. Or, again, to see it 
adopt the heretical view of certain early Christian sects 
that it was not Christ, but Judas, who was executed, and 
that Christ had to allow the "hallucination" as a pun- 
ishment for having suffered people to call him God. But 
that fundamental tenet of Christianity, viz., the Sonship, 
Mohammed fought against with unswerving consistency; 
and never grew tired of repeating, in the most emphatic 
terms which he, the master of speech, could find, his ab- 
horrence against that notion, at which " the Heavens 
might tear open, and the earth cleave asunder." There 
is a brief chapter in the Koran, the "Confession of God's 
Unity," which is considered tantamount to the third part 
of the whole Koran, though it only consists of these words 
— " Say, God is one : the Everlasting God. He begetteth 
not, and he is not begotten, and there is none like unto 
him." Still more distinctly is this notion expressed in 
another place : " The Christians say Christ is the Son of 
God. May God resist them . . . how are they infatu- 
ated !" And again : " They are certainly infidels who say 
God is One of Three." . . . "Believe in God and his 
Apostle, but speak not of a Trinity. There is but One 
God. Far be it from him that he should have a son." . . . 



ISLAM. 325 

" Christ the Son of Mary is no more than an Apostle." 
. . . "It is not fit for Allah that he should have a Sou. 
Praise to him !" (i. e., far be it from him !). 

Jesus, according to Mohammed, is only one of the six 
apostles who are specially chosen out of three hundred 
and thirteen to proclaim new dispensations, in confirma- 
tion of previous ones. These are Adam, Noah, Abraham, 
Moses, Jesus, and Mohammed. But this point must 
come under further consideration under the tenets of 
Islam. 

We now turn to Judaism, which, as we have hinted 
before, forms the kernel of Mohammedanism, both general 
and special. Here merely the preliminary observation 
that when we spoke of the Talmud as a source of Islam 
we did not imply that Mohammed knew it, or, for the 
matter of that, had ever heard its very name; but it 
seems as if he had breathed from his childhood almost the 
air of contemporary Judaism, such Judaism as is found 
by us crystallized in the Talmud, the Targum, the Mid- 
rash. 

Indeed, the geographical and ethnographical notices of 
Arabia in Scripture are to so astounding a degree in ac- 
cordance with the very latest researches, that we can not 
but assume the connection between Palestine and Arabia 
to have been close from the earliest periods. The Ish- 
maelites of the Arabian midland are, in the earliest doc- 
uments, carefully distinguished from the Yoctanites and 
Kushites of Marah in the south, not to speak of the mi- 



r- 



326 APPENDIX. 

nute information revealed by the later documents. At 
what time Jews first went to Arabia is a problem which 
we shall not endeavor to settle. Of Abraham and Ish- 
mael, and the halo of legends that surrounds these na- 
tional heroes, hereafter. But even rejecting, as we must 
do, the hallucinations of two most eminent scholars re- 
o-ardinsr the immigration of an entire Simeonitic regiment 
in the time of Saul, who having fought a battle near Mecca 
— hence called Makkah Rabbah (Great Defeat) — settled 
as Gorhoms or Gerim (Strangers), and so forth, we can 
not shut our eyes to the fact that Jews, " worshipers of 
the invisible God of Abraham," existed, though in small 
numbers, in Arabia, at a very primitive period indeed. 
Bokht-Nasar, as Nebuchadnezzar is called in early Arabic 
documents, caused many others to seek refuge in Arabia. 
The Hasmoneans forced a whole tribe of Northern Arabia 
to adopt Judaism; a Jewish king of Arabs fights against 
Pompey. The Talmud shows a rather unexpected famil- 
iarity with Arab manners and customs, and — to indicate 
one curious point — the prophet Elijah, who appears there 
as a kind of immortal tutelary genius — goes about in the 
guise of an Arab (the Khiclhr of Mohammedan legend). 
The angels that appear to Abraham " look like Arabs " 
— not to speak of Job and his three friends, the Queen of 
Sheba, and other like Arab reminiscences. Centuries be- 
fore Mohammed, Kheibar, five days from Medina, and 
Yemen, in South Arabia, were in the hands of the Jews. 
Dhu Nowas, the last Jewish king of Yemen, falls by the 



islam. 327 

hands of the Abyssinian Negus. The question for us re- 
mains, what phase of faith these Jews represented. 

It has been supposed that, though combined among 
themselves for purposes of war, they held little intercom- 
munication with their brethren either in Palestine or even 
in Arabia, and therefore were ignorant of the develop- 
ment of "The Law" that went rolling on in Judaea and 
Babylonia. The chief proof for this was found in the ab- 
sence of Judseo-Arabic literature before Mohammed. To 
us, this circumstance affords absolutely no proof. None, 
at least, that would not perhaps rather confirm our view 
to the exact contrary. We know hew literatures may be 
and have been stamped out; or had the Phoenicians, the 
Chaldaeans, the Etruscans, never any literature? We 
happen to know the contrary, though nothing, not to say 
worse than nothing, because more or less corrupt reminis- 
cences, has remained of it all. And, further, we have dis- 
tinct proof in the very Koran that not only did they keep 
au coitrant with regard to Haggaclah — witness all the 
legends of Islam — but even to Halachah. Mohammed 
literally quotes a passage from the Mishnah,* and, further, 
gives special injunctions taken from the Gemara, such as 
the purification with sand in default of water, the short- 
ening of the prayer in the moment of danger, etc.f There 

* Xotably the judge's admonition to the witnesses, that he who wan- 
tonly destroys one single human life will be considered as guilty as if he 
had destroyed a whole world. 

t "Thy will be done in Heaven; grant peace to them that fear thee 
on Earth ; and whatever pleaseth thee, do. Blessed art thou, O Lord, 



328 APPENDIX. 

is an academy, or Bethhamidrash, at Medina; and Akiba, 
when on his revolutionary mission, is consulted by the 
Arab Jews about one of the most minute and intricate 
points of the Oral Law. 

In truth, these Jews stood not merely on the heights 
of contemporary culture, but far above their Arab breth- 
ren. They represented, in fact, the Culture of Arabia. 
They could all read and write, while the Arabs had oc- 
casionally to capture some foreign scholars and promise 
them their liberty on condition that they should teach 
their boys the elements of reading and writing. The 
Jews — nay, the Jewesses, as Mohammed had to learn to 
his grief — were specially gifted with the poetic vein, as 
we shall see farther on ; and poetry in Arabia was at 
the time of Mohammed the one great accomplishment. 
There was a certain fair held annually, where, as at the 
Olympic Games, the productions of the last twelve months 
were read and received prizes. The beautiful tale of the 
hanging up of the prize poems in the Kaaba, whence they 
were called Moallakat, is unfortunately a myth, since Mo- 
allakat does not betoken suspended ones, but (pearls) 
loosely strung together. But, undoubtedly, to have made 
the best poem of the season was a great distinction, not 
merely for the individual poet, but for his entire clan. 

These Jewish tribes, some of whom derived their gene- 
alogy from priestly families (Al-Kahinani), lived scattered 

who hearest prayer" — is the formula suggested by the Talmud for the 
hours of mental distraction or peril. 



islam. 329 

all over Arabia, but chiefly in the south, in Yeman (Him- 
yar), " the dust of which was like unto gold, and where 
men never died." They lived, as did other Arabs, either 
the life of roving Bedouins, or cultivated the land, or in- 
habited cities, such as Yathrib, the later Medina or City, 
by way of eminence — of the Prophet, to wit. Outwardly 
they had completely -merged in the great Arabic family. 
Conversions of entire clans to Judaism, intermarriages, 
and the immense family likeness, so to speak, of the two 
descendants of Abraham — for the derivation of the Arabs 
from Ishmael, whatever may be alleged to the contrary, 
seems unquestionably an ante-Mohammedan notion — fa- 
cilitated the leveling work of Jewish cosmopolitanism. 
Acquainted, as we said, with both Halachah and Hagga- 
dah, they seemed, under the peculiar story-loving influence 
of their countrymen, to have cultivated more particular- 
ly the latter with all its gorgeous hues and colors. Val- 
iant with the sword, which they not rarely turned against 
their own kinsmen, they never omitted the fulfillment of 
their greatest religious duty — the release of their cap- 
tives, though these might be their adversaries ; and fur- 
ther, like their fathers, from of old, they kept the Sabbath 
holy even in war, though the prohibition had been re- 
pealed. They waited for the Messiah, and they turned 
their faces toward Jerusalem.* They fasted, they prayed, 

* The synagogues were generally built in the form of a theatre, the portal 
due west, so that the worshiper's face was turned to the east, even to the 
Holy of Holies of the Temple of Jerusalem, in pious allusion to the words 



330 APPENDIX. 

and they scattered around them the seeds of such high 
culture as was contained in their literature. And Arabia 
called them the People of the "Book;" even as Hegel has 
called them the People of the " Geist." These seeds, 
though some fell on stones, and some on the desert sand, 
had borne fruit a thousand-fold. Of generally practical, 
nay vital, institutions which they had introduced, long 
before Mohammed, into the land of their adoption, may 
be mentioned the Calendar; and the intercalary month 
was by the Arabs called, in grateful acknowledgment, 
JVassi (Prince), the title of the Babylonian head of the 
Jewish Diaspora. The Kaaba and the Pilgrimage, Yoc- 
tan and Ishmael, Zemzem and Hagar, received their color- 
ing from Jewish Arabs. They were altogether looked up 
to with much reverence, and their superiority would also 
politically have stood them in very good stead, w 7 hen Mo- 
hammed subsequently turned against them, had they 
known what united action meant. 

When we said that there were distinguished poets 
among them, we meant poets not Jewish, but purely 
Arabic. Their poems are all of intensely national Arabic 
type. Among others we have fragments by Assamael 

(1 Kings viii., 29), "That their eyes may be open toward this house night 
and day . . . that thon mayest hearken to the prayers which thy servant 
shall make toward this place." Daniel prayed toward Jerusalem and 
" the tower of David, builded for an armory " of the Song of Songs, is 
taken allegorically as ah allusion to that enduring and mighty holiness 
that ever belonged to the spot, once hallowed by the presence of the She- 
chinah. And the early Church followed also in this respect. 



ISLAM. 331 

(Samuel), " the faithful," a great chief, who dwelt in a 
strong castle, and who, rather than betray his friend's 
confidence, saw his boy cut in twain before his eyes. 
What has survived of his songs breathes noble pride and 
loftiness of soul, tempered at times by a strange sadness : 
joy of life and love of conviviality ; as indeed one of his 
poems opens with the mournful question whether the 
women would lament him after his death, and how ? 
Both his son Garid and his grandson Suba were poets; 
so were Arrabi, whose sons fought against Mohammed ; 
and Aus, by whom we have a kind of characteristic, yet 
mild, protest against his wife's change of creed. M We 
live," he sings, " according to the Law (Thora) and Faith 
of Moses, but Mohammed's Faith is also good. Each of 
us thinks himself in the right path." Then there is Su- 
raih, who " would drink from the cup of those that are of 
noble heart, even if there be twofold poison therein ;" and 
about four or five more, w T ho sing of love and wine, the 
sword and faithfulness, hospitality and the horse. There 
were also Jewish poetesses, whose poems, as we have al- 
ready mentioned, were " bitterer to Mohammed than ar- 
rows," and who did not escape his vengeance. 

We had to tarry somewhat on this out-of-the-way field 
of the circumstances and position of Arabian Jews — not 
a little of which would, but for Islam, never have been 
known. Of their tenets and ceremonies, their legends 
and dogmas, as transferred to Islam, we have to treat 
separately. And such was Arabia as to difference of 



332 APPENDIX. 

creeds when Mohammed arose. We left him at the mo- 
ment when he began to become aware of his " Mission." 
But he was not without special predecessors. These 
were the Hanifs, literally in Talmudical parlance — " hyp- 
ocrites." "Four shall not see God," says the Talmud — 
" the scoffers, the Hanifs " (" who are to be exposed at 
all hazards," while generally it is considered better " to 
be thrown into a fiery furnace than bring any one to pub- 
lic shame"), "the liars, the slanderers." These Hanifs 
form a very curious and most important phase of Arabian 
faith before Mohammed — a phase of Jewish Christianity 
or Christian Judaism. They loved to style themselves 
also " Abrahamitic Sabians," and Mohammed, at the out- 
set, called himself one of them. They were, to all intents 
and purposes, " heretics." They believed in One God. 
They had the Law and the Gospel, and, further, certaiu 
"Rolls of Abraham and Moses," called Ashmaat, to which 
Mohammed at first appeals. This word Ashmaat, or 
Shamaata, has likewise given rise to most hazardous 
conjectures. To us it appears very simply the Talmud- 
ical Shemaata, which is identical with Halachah or legal 
tradition. In Arabia it seems to have assumed the signi- 
fication of Mid rash in general, chiefly as regards its Hag- 
gadistic or legendary part. These mysterious Rolls, 
about which endless discussions have arisen, thus seem, 
to our mind, to have been neither more nor less than cer- 
tain collections of Midrash, beginning, as is its wont, with 
stern Halachah, ending, as is still more its wont, with gor- 



islam. m 333 

geous dreams of fancy, woven around the sainted heads 
of the Patriarchs, with transcendental allegories — " tales 
of angels, fairy legends, festal songs, and words of wis- 
dom." Nor does it much matter what were the original 
names of these rolls or collections in question (there must 
have been scores upon scores of them), since there is, as 
far as we can gather their probable contents, but little in 
them which has not survived in one form or other in our 
extant Midrash-books. 

There were some very prominent men among this sect, 
if sect it may be called. Foremost among them stands ^ 
one Omayya, a highly gifted and most versatile poet, who 
never would acknowledge Mohammed, and ceased not to 
write satires upon him ; more especially as it had been 
his intention to proclaim himself prophet. Besides him 
there are recorded four special men (all relations of the 
Prophet, Waraka among them), who, disgusted with the 
fetichism into which their countrymen had sunk, once met 
at the Kaaba, during the annual feast, and thus expressed 
their secret opinion to each other. " Shall we encompass 
a stone which neither heareth nor seeth, neither helpeth 
nor hurteth ? Let us seek a better faith," they said. 
And they went abroad to seek and to find the Hanifite 
creed — the " religion of Abraham." 

This Religion of Abraham Mohammed came to re-es- 

CD 

tablish, Mohammed the Hanifite, who succeeded where 
the others failed. He used the arguments, the doctrine, 
occasionally the very words of these his predecessors — 



334 APPENDIX. 

though we have here to be doubly on our guard against 
the possible coloring of later Mohammedan tradition — 
chiefly of Zaid, who refrained from eating blopd and that 
which had been killed for idolatry — two things pointing 
emphatically to Jewish teaching.* Zaid, it is reported, 
also abhorred the barbarous burying alive of children, then 
customary among the Arabian savages, and " worshiped 
the God of Abraham." Also, did he say, "O Lord, if I 
knew what form of worship thou desirest, I would adopt 
it. But I know it not." And when his nephew after his 
death asked the Prophet to pray for him, Mohammed said, 
"Verily I will: he will form a Church of his own on the 
Day of Judgment." Nay, more, Zaid had actually taught 
at Mecca, and Mohammed openly declared himself his 
pupil. 

We shall return to this "Religion of Abraham," which 
is the clew to Islam — and the mystery of which the Mid- 
rash alone solves satisfactorily. At this stage it behooves 
us to follow out the vicissitudes of Mohammed's career as 
briefly as we may ; for without these we could never fully 
comprehend that i*eligion, whereof he is the corner-stone 
and the pinnacle. 

And first as to his early miracles, which nearly proved 
his ruin. The Jews required a sign, says the New Testa- 
ment. The desire to see the Prophet, the chosen and gift- 
ed person, perform things apparently contrary to what is 

* Foremost among the seven fundamental "Laws of the Sons of Noah." 



islam. 335 

called Nature — sio-hts and sounds to wonder at, things bv 
which to prove his intimate communication with and the 
command over the more or less personified powers of the 
Cosmos, of which ancient and mediaeval times had so vague 
a notion — is very easily understood ; and both the Old and 
New Testament are replete with extraordinary manifesta- 
tions. The Talmud, while representing, to a certain ex- 
tent, what is called the "advanced" opinion of the time, 
certainly contains views somewhat different from the pop- 
ular one. " Esther's Miracle," it says, " was the last — the 
end of all miracles" And she is called, in allusion to the 
well-known Psalm-heading, "Hind of the Dawn" — "be- 
cause with her it first became Light" And since there is 
nothing in the whole storv of Esther which resembles in 
the faintest degree a " supernatural " act ; and since, more- 
over, the name of God does not even appear in the book 
from beginning to end, this Talmudic parlance of " mira- 
cles "is very like the modern use of the word "prophet," 
of which it was remarked the other day that " many living 
writers, having first stripped the word of its ancient mean-, 
ing, bestow it freely upon any body." Furthermore, the 
Mishnah had distinctly declared that miracles were " cre- 
ated " from the very beginning, in the gloaming of the 
sixth day. " God," says the Talmud, still more explicitly, 
" made it a condition upon the sea, when he created it, to 
open itself before the Israelites ; the fire to leave the three 
martyrs unscathed; the heavens to open to the voice of 
Hezekiah," etc. No less clearly is the meaning of the 



336 APPENDIX. 

Masters further expressed in such sentences as these: 
"The healing of a sick person is often a greater miracle 
than that which happened to the men in the pit. Those 
who have been saved from flagrant sin may consider that 
a miracle has happened to them. Do not reckon upon a 
miracle — they do not happen every day. Those to whom 
a miracle happens often know it not themselves," etc., etc. 
But the old craving: for wonders was either still strong: 
among them, or they wished to vex Mohammed's soul — 
as they did in a thousand bitter little ways — when they 
found themselves disappointed in him, and so incited peo- 
ple to ask him for some miraculous performance. He is 
asked, he complains, to call wells and rivers to gush forth, 
to bring down the heaven in pieces, to remove mountains, 
to have a house of gold, to ascend to heaven by a ladder, 
to cause the dead to speak, and to make Allah and his 
angels testify to him — and he indignantly bursts out, 
" My Lord be praised ! Ami more than a man sent as an 
apostle ? . . . Angels do not commonly walk the earth, or 
God would have dispatched an angel to preach his truth 
to you ;" and, he says, when they do see a sign — even the 
moon splitting — these unbelievers but turn aside, saying, 
"This is a well-devised trick, a sleight of hand." 

How well he had entered into the meaning of those Tal- 
mudical notions on miracles — " Esther's being the last " — 
and how positively he spoke upon that point, though in 
vain, is best shown by his protest that " the miracles of 
all prophets were confined to their own times. My mira- 



islam. 337 

cle is the Koran which shall remain forever, and I am 
hopeful of having more followers than any of the other 
prophets." " Former prophets," he also used to say (and 
this is one of the most momentous dicta) " were sent to 
their own sects. I was sent to all. I have been sent for 
one thing only : to make straight the crooked paths, to 
unite the strayed tribes , and to teach that ' There is no 
god but God by whom the eyes of the blind and the ears 
of the deaf shall be opened, and the hearts of those who 
know nothing. 5 " And over and over again he points to 
those much greater signs " in Heaven and on Earth " than 
any wondrous manifestation that had ever been wrought 
by prophets — the sun, and the moon, and the stars, the 
day and the night, the structure of men's bodies, the 
mountains which steady the earth, the water that comes 
from on high to slake the thirst of man and cattle, and 
plant and tree : even the olive-tree, and the palm-tree, 
and the vine — and he speaks to these desert folk of the 
sea upon which walk the great ships. Are not all these 
things made for man's use and service, even while they 
serve Allah ? ..." I never said that Allah's treasures are 
in my hands, that I knew the hidden things, or that I was 
an Angel. ... I, who can not even help or trust myself, 
unless Allah willeth. Will ye not reflect a little ?" . . . 
Did they perceive the flashes of lightning and the thun- 
derous rolls? Allah would show them his miracles in 
good time— even the yawning mouth of Hell. Then they 
would indeed believe, even as those people of the Cities 

E 



338 APPENDIX. 

of the Plain had believed, when it was too late. Had 
their caravans passed the Dead Sea — even Sodom and 
Gomorrha? Did they know how Thamud and Ad were 
destroyed by a terrible cry from Heaven, or what had be- 
come of Pharaoh ? " These are the signs of Allah. . . . He 
giveth Life, and he giveth Death, and unto him ye must 
return." . . . And to leave no doubt as to what his own 
signs and wonders really consist of, the single verses of 
the Koran are called Ayat=Ileb. Ot: letter, sign, wonder. 

But all these protests availed naught. Miracles there 
must be, and miracles there were. Three — and that is all 
— are hinted at in the Koran. First, Mohammed's seeing 
Gabriel " in the open horizon," when despair drove him to 
attempt self-destruction : " One mighty in power, endued 
with understanding," revealed himself to him, then " on 
the highest part of the horizon, at two bow r s' length." 
And again he appears to him under a certain tree, a the 
Tree of the Limit" — a lotos -tree, covered with myriads 
of angels, near the Garden of Repose. This second vision, 
however, it probably connected with the Miraj, or Mo- 
hammed's Night-journey. The Jews had told the Arabi- 
ans that no prophet ever arose out of the Holy Land, and 
that Moses had gone up to Heaven. What they did not 
tell them probably was that other significant saying, that, 
since the destruction of Jerusalem, the gift of prophecy 
had fallen to fools -and babes — a dictum we have often 
enough felt inclined to quote of our own days. And, fur- 
ther, that the Talmud states, as expressly as can be, that 



islam. u 339 

"Moses never went up to Heaven" — even as it is written, 
"The Heavens are Jehovah's, and the Earth hath he giv- 
en to the children of man." 

It was therefore absolutely necessary that the Prophet 
should have been in the Holy Land — nay, in Jerusalem. 
And the Miraj happened, the transfiguration, the ascen- 
sion, the real consummation of Mohammed's mission, and 
the centre of Islamic transcendental legend and creed. A 
whole volume of traditions exists on this one single point. 

" i Praise be unto him,' says the Koran, ' who transported his servant 
by night from the temple Al Haram (Mecca) to the remotest temple (of 
Jerusalem), the circuit of which we have blessed, that we might show him 
some of our signs. Verily he that heareth, that seeth . . .'" 

And in verse sixty-two of that same chapter, this journey 
is emphatically declared to be a " Vision " — " a dream " — 
" a trial for men." 

And these are its brief outlines, though Mohammed's 
own account was probably still more briefly and soberly 
conceived as compared with the worlds of golden dreams 
in which the later legend revels.* 

In the middle of the night Gabriel appeared to Moham- 
med, and told him that the Lord had intended to bestow 
honor upon him such as he had not bestowed upon any 

* We may have occasion to trace some of the gorgeous features of this 
Vision in the latter Haggadah, when we speak of Mohammed's Heaven 
and Hell. Exceedingly characteristic are the differences on some points : 
among other things, the entire omission in the Mohammedan legend of 
that Fifth Heaven of the Midrash, " Gan Eden," which is reserved for the 
souls of noble women — Pharaoh's daughter, who so tenderly took pity on 
the child Moses, occupying the first place in the first circle. 



340 APPENDIX. 

born being yet, such as had never come into any man's 
heart. He arose, and they went to the Kaaba, which they 
encompassed seven times. Gabriel then took out Moham- 
med's heart, washed it in the well Zemzem, filled it with 
faith and knowledge, and put it back in its place. He was 
then clothed in a robe of light, and was covered with a 
turban of light, in which in thousand-fold rays of light 
gleamed the words, " Mohammed is God's Prophet ; Mo- 
hammed is God's Friend." Then, surrounded by myriads 
of angels, he bestrode the JB or ak — which only means Light- 
ning — who had the face of a man ; his red chest was as a 
ruby, and his back like a white pearl. His wings reached 
from the eastern point of the horizon to the western, and 
at every step he went as far as eye could see. Thrice Mo- 
hammed prayed while he flew^-at Medina, at Madyan, at 
Bethlehem. Sweet voices were calling — to the left, to the 
right, before him, behind him ; beautiful women flitted 
around : he heeded naught. And the angel told him that 
had he listened to the first voice, his followers would have 
become Jews ; to the second, Christians ; to the third, they 
would have given up Paradise for the pleasures of this 
world. At Jerusalem he entered, greeted by new hosts 
of angels, the Temple (and the ring by which the Borak 
was fastened has no doubt been seen by many of our 
readers near the " Dome of the Rock ") ; and here all the 
prophets, Christ among them, were assembled ; and very 
striking are the likenesses given of them. Abraham re- 
sembled Mohammed most of all. 



ISLAM. 341 

I 

Prayers were said, and Mohammed acted as Priest Pre- 
centor. Most of the prophets then held a brief discourse 
in praise of God, and descriptive of their own individual 
mission on earth. Mohammed, having spoken last, ascend- 
ed Jacob's ladder, standing upon the Rock, the same which 
forms, according to the Midrash, the foundation stone of 
the earth. And a very strange-looking rock it is, rising a 
few feet above the marble around, scarcely touched with 
the chisel ; and at its southwestern corner there is seen the 
" footprint of the Prophet," and next to it the " handprint 
of Gabriel," who held down the rock as it tried to rise 
heavenward with God's Messenger. The ladder on w^hich 
Mohammed mounted into the regions of light is the same 
which Jacob saw in his dream : it reaches from heaven to 
earth, and on it the souls of the departed return to God. 
It is made of ruby and emerald, of gold and silver, and of 
precious stones. 

Having passed the angel who held the seven earths and 
the seven heavenly spheres, and the blue abyss in which 
float all ideal prototypes of things sublunary, he and Ga- 
briel arrived at the Gates of the first Heaven of the World, 
where myriads of new angels held watch. Both he and 
Gabriel entered, and found other myriads praising God in 
the postures of Moslem prayer. On a magnificent throne 
sat Adam, dressed in light, the human souls arrayed by 
his sides — to his right the good souls, to his left the 
wicked ones. Farther on were Paradise and Hell. Pun- 
ishments were wrought here according to earthly deeds. 



342 APPENDIX. 

The miserly souls were naked and hungry and thirsty; 
thieves and swindlers sat at tables filled with gorgeous 
things, of which they were not allowed to participate; 
and scoffers and slanderers carried heavy spiked logs of 
wood that tore their flesh, even as they had wounded the 
hearts of their fellow-men. Thus they passed heaven aft- 
er heaven. In the second they found Christ and John the 
Baptist ; in the third, Joseph and David ; in the fourth, 
Enoch ; in the fifth, Aaron ; in the sixth, Moses, who wept 
because Mohammed was to be more exalted than he had 
been. In the highest heaven they found Abraham. Above 
the seventh heaven they came to a tree of vast leaves and 
fruits. In it is Gabriel's dwelling-place, on one branch of 
untold expanse; in another, myriads of angels are reading 
the Pentateuch; in another, other myriads of angels read 
the Gospel ; yet in another they sing the Psalms ; and in 
another they chant the Koran, from eternity to eternity. 
Four rivers flow forth from this region, one of which is 
the River of Mercy. There is also a House of Prayer 
there, right above the Kaaba.* Near it a tank of light, 
from which, when Gabriel's light approaches it, seventy 
thousand angels spring into existence — which will remind 
our readers of the river of fire that rolls its flames under 
the divine throne, and out of which rise ever new myr- 
iads of angels, who praise God and sink back into naught. 
They approach the temple, singing praises unto God ; and 

* In accordance with the Haggadistic notion of the " Jerusalem above," 
and the "heavenly Jerusalem " of the New Testament. 



islam. 343 

each time when their voices resound a new angel is born. 
" Not a drop of water is in the sea, not a leaf on a tree, 
not a span of space in the heavens that is not guarded by 
an angel." And to this day all these gorgeous transcen- 
dentalisms and day-dreams survive bodily in certain Jew- 
ish mystic liturgical poems (Piut),into which the golden 
rivers of the Hag'gadah have been turned by Poets or 
" Paitanas " at an early period.* 

A space farther, a little space, after the Tree of the 
Limit, Mohammed found himself of a sudden alone. Nei- 
ther Gabriel nor Borak dared go beyond it ; and he heard 
a voice calling "Approach." And he passed on, and cur- 
tain after curtain, and veil after veil was drawn up before 
him and fell behind him. When the last curtain rose, he 
stood within two bow-shots from the Throne ; and here — 
says the Koran — " he saw the greatest of the signs of his 
Lord." No pen dared to say more. " There was a great 
stillness, and nothing was heard except the silent sound 
of the reed, wherewith the decrees of God are inscribed 
upon the tablets of Fate." . . . 

It would indeed be a labor of love, and not without its 
reward, to follow this Miraj-Saga through all its stages, 
down to the Persian and Turkish cycles. But it is not 
our task. All we have to add here is that Mohammed is 
not to be made responsible for some of his enthusiastic 
admirers when they transformed this Vision — a vision as 

* In Western Europe this part of the Jewish Liturgy, as too mystical 
for the weaker brethren, has now mostly been abrogated. 



344 APPENDIX. 

grand as any in the whole Divine Comedy (which in- 
deed has unconsciously borrowed some of its richest 
plumage from it), but which Mohammed, until he was 
sick of it, insisted on calling a Dream — into insipidity 
and drivel. 

One feature more deserves mention. When Zaid asked 
the Prophet after his little daughter who had died, he 
answered that she was in Paradise and happy. And Zaid 
wept bitterly. 

Remains, as of traditional miracles, the last one of the 
two angels who took out Mohammed's heart when he 
was a boy, purified it in snow, then weighed it, and found 
it weightier than all the thousands they put into the other 
scale — a parable equally transparent, and hardly a " mir- 
acle" in the conventional sense of the word. 

Only one command was given to Mohammed on that 
occasion of the Ascension : that his faithful should pray 
fifty times daily. And when he returned to where Moses 
waited for him, and told him this, Moses made him re- 
turn to pray God to reduce the number. And it was 
made forty. "This is still too much," Moses said; "I 
know that the faithful will not be able to do even thus 
much." And again and again was the number reduced 
till it came to five, and Mohammed no longer dared re- 
turn to God, though Moses urged him to do so. 

Very strikingly indeed does the Haggadah manifest her 
constant presence, not merely throughout this whole Vis- 
ion, but even in such minute features, as this last, of God's 



islam. 345 

instructing Mohammed about prayer.* For when the 
Pentateuch records that extraordinary manifestation of 
God to Moses on the rock, where the glory of the Lord 
passeth by and proclaims: "Jehovah, Jehovah, God, mer- 
ciful and gracious, long-suffering, and abundant of good- 
ness and truth, and keeping mercy for thousands, forgiv- 
ing iniquity, and transgression and sin," . . . the Talmud 
first of all introduces this passage, as is its wont in the 
like anthropomorphistic passages, with the awe-stricken, 
half-trembling words that, If Holy Writ had not said this, 
no man would dare to speak of a like manifestation ; and, 
next, proceeds to explain that " God showed Moses hoio 
that men should pray " "Let them invoke my Mercy and 
my Long-suffering. I will forgive them. Jehovah — twice, 
repeated — means, It is Jehovah, even I, before man sin^ 
neth, and I, the self-same Jehovah, after he has sinned and 
repented." 

It is time that we should now return, after these many 
indispensable little monographs, to the founder of Islam 
himself, as an historical personage. Ere we proceed to his 
book and faith, we must sum up the events that led first 
to his Flight, that event with which not only he, but 
Arabia, enters history, an event fraught with intense im- 
portance for all mankind. 

When Mohammed had become clear as to his mission, 
he sought converts. And his first convert was his faith- 

* For the shortening of it, see above, p. 327, note. 

P2 



346 APPENDIX. 

fill, motherly Chadija; his second, the freed slave Zaid, 
probably a Christian, whom he adopted; and his third, 
his small cousin Ali, ten years of age. Chadija, his good 
angel, Tradition reports, 

" believed in Mohammed and believed in the truth of the Kevelation, 
and fortified him in his aims. She was the first who believed in God, 
in his messenger, and in the Revelation. Thereby God had sent him 
comfort, for as often as he heard aught disagreeable, contradictory, or 
how he was shown to be a liar, she was sad about it. God comforted 
him through her when he returned to her, in rousing him up again and 
making his burden more light to him, assuring him of her own faith in 
him, and representing to him the futility of men's babble." 

And, in truth, when she died, not merely he but Islam 
lost much of their fervor, much of their purity. He would 
not be comforted, though he married many wives after 
her; and the handsomest and youngest of his wives would 
never cease being jealous of that " dead, toothless old 
woman." Abu Bakr, a wealthy merchant — energetic, pru- 
dent, and honest — joined at once. He had probably been 
a fellow- disciple of Mohammed at the feet of Zaid the 
Skeptic, and was his confidant and bosom friend through- 
out his life — the only one who unhesitatingly joined; 
" who tarried not, neither was he perplexed," Mohammed 
said of him. It was he who stood at the head of the 
twelve chosen Apostles who subsequently rallied around 
the Prophet, among whom we find Hamza, the Lion of 
God, Othman, Omar, and the rest, men of energy, talent, 
and wealth, and lono; before adverse to Paganism. Those 

7 CD CD 

twelve were his principal advisers while he lived, and 






islam. 347 

after his death they founded an empire greater than that 
of Alexander or Rome. As to Abu Bakr, he was but 
two years younger than the Prophet, not a man of genius, 
but of calm, clear, impartial judgment, and yet of so ten- 
der and sympathetic a heart that he used to be called 
"the Sighing." He was not only one of the most popular 
men, but also rich and generous, and thus his influence 
can not well be overrated. It is his adherence to Moham- 
med throughout which, even by those who most depreci- 
ate the Prophet, is taken as one of the highest guarantees 
of the latter's sincerity. Nay, he is said to have done 
more for Islam than Mohammed himself — not to mention 
that, with his extensive knowledge of genealogy, one of 
the most important sciences of the period, he was able 
at the Prophet's desire to supply Hassan, the poet of 
the Faith, with matter for satires against the inimical 
Koreish. 

Most of Mohammed's relations seemed to have treated 
his teachings with scorn. " There he goes," they used to 
say ; " he is going to speak to the world about the heav- 
ens now." Abu Lahab, in open family council, called him 
a fool, instantly upon which followed that characteristic 
Surah, "Perish shall the hands of Abu Lahab. May he 
perish. . . . And his wife shall carry fuel for his hell-fire." 
The other Meccans treated the whole story of his mission, 
his revelations, and dreams with something like pitying 
contempt, as long as he kept to generalities, though the 
number of uninfluential adherents grew apace. But when 



348 APPENDIX. 

he spoke of their gods — which they naively enough would 
call Thagut (Error), the technical Jewish word for Idols* 
— as Idols, they waxed wroth, and combined against him, 
until the stir both he and they made spread more and 
more rapidly and dangerously, and with it rose his own 
courage. He felt committed. All hesitations and doubts 
and fears and reconciliations he cast behind him now. 
He openly set the proud Meccans at defiance. He cursed 
those who reviled him with burning curses. He cursed 
their fathers in their graves; nay, his own father would 
undergo eternal punishment in hell, for that he had been 
an idolater. "There is no God but Allah I" He cried it 
aloud, day and night, and the echoes became more and 
more frequent. 

His life was in jeopardy now, and his uncle, Abu Talib, 
under whose protection he had fallen when a youth, stood 
forth against the whole clan. He would protect him if 
they all combined against him. Did he believe in his 
mission ? Not in the least. He remained steadfast in 
his own creed or skepticism to the day of his death. But 
he was an Arab, a Shemite. He had adopted him, and 
promised to protect him; and nothing, absolutely noth- 
ing, could cause him to break that holiest of engagements. 
He received the deputations of his kinsfolk, listened to 
their speeches, " how that Mohammed blasphemed their 
gods, called the living fools and the dead denizens of hell- 

* See Tar gums, p. 319, post. 



ISLAM. 349 

fire ; that he was mad, brought disgrace upon their family 
and the whole clan ; that he ought to be extinguished 
somehow — anyhow ;" and he shook his head, saying noth- 
ing, or next to nothing. Again they returned and again, 
and at last demanded that the Possessed Man should be 
given up to them to be dealt with according to their 
judgment. If not — " We are determined no longer to 
bear his blasphemy toward our gods, nor his insults to- 
ward ourselves. If thou givest him protection, we will 
fight both him and thee, until one of us shall have been 
extinguished." 

Abu Talib sent for Mohammed and told him what had 
happened, representing to him the position of affairs, and 
spoke to him about the danger he had brought upon their 
good old tribe. And very characteristic, not merely for 
the dramatis personce, but for Arab feeling, is the further 
story of the interview. Mohammed, though fully believing 
now that even his uncle was about to abandon him to the 
mercies of his kinsfolk, replied — " By Allah, uncle, if they 
put the sun to my right hand, and the moon to my left, I 
will not give up the course which I am pursuing until 
Allah gives me success or I perish." And the tears start- 
ing to his eyes, he turned to depart. Then Abu Talib 
cried out aloud, " Son of my brother, come back !" And 
he returned. And Abu Talib said: "Depart in peace, O 
my nephew ! Say whatever thou desirest, for, by Allah, 
I will in nowise abandon thee forever." 

Fanaticism, here baffled, sought an outlet elsewhere. 



350 APPENDIX. 

As usual, the weak and the unprotected became the first 
victims and martyrs to their faith, while others aposta- 
tized, until Mohammed himself advised his converts to 
go to Abyssinia, where there ruled a pious and just king, 
and where they would find protection. Here also, when 
Meccan embassadors pursued them, and tried to obtain 
their extradition, they declared their creed to the Negus 
in these words : 

"We lived in ignorance, in idolatry, and unchastity ; the strong op- 
pressed the weak ; we spoke untruth ; we violated the duties of hospitality. 
Then a prophet arose, one whom we knew from our youth, with whose 
descent, and conduct, and good faith, and morality we are well acquaint- 
ed. He told us to worship one God, to speak the truth, to keep good 
faith, to assist our relations, to fulfill the rights of hospitality, to abstain 
from all things impure, ungodly, unrighteous. And he ordered us to say 
prayers, give alms, and to fast. We believed in him, we followed him. 
But our countrymen persecuted us, tortured us, and tried to cause us to 
forsake our religion, and now we throw ourselves upon your protection 
with confidence." 

They then read him the nineteenth chapter of the Koran, 
which speaks of Christ and John the Baptist, and they all 
wept, and the king dismissed the Meccan messengers, re- 
fusing to give up the refugees. As to the nature of Christ 
they gave him a somewhat vague account, with which the 
king, however, agreed — to his later discomfiture. 

This nineteenth chapter, which so moved them all, con- 
tains the story both of the Annunciation of John's birth 
to Zacharias and that of Christ's birth to the Virgin. It 
is here where Maryam=rMary, "the daughter of Amran, 
the sister of Harun," is described, as in the Gospel of the 



ISLAM. 351 

Infancy, as leaning on a barren trunk of a palm-tree when 
the throes come upon her, and she cries, " Would to God 
that I had been dead and forgotten before this." . . . 
And a voice came from within, " Grieve not." And a riv- 
ulet gushed forth at her feet, and the erst withered palm 
glistened with luscious dates. Then, taunted by the peo- 
ple for having borne a child — " her father not being a bad 
man, nor her mother disreputable " — the child itself, even 
Christ, to whom she mutely points, answers to every 
body's wonderment, out of his cradle, in this wise : "I am 
a servant of Allah. He has given me the Book, and he 
has appointed me as a Prophet." And a few verses 
further on, a new rhyme indicates the commencement of 
a new episode, which reads as follows: "This is Jesus, 
the son of Maryam, according to the true doctrine" (not 
"the words of truth," as often translated), "which they 
doubt. It is not fit for God that he should have a son. 
Praise to him !" (i. e., far be it from him). And finally, 
at the end of this same chapter — 

"They say God has begotten a son. In this ye utter a blasphemy; 
and but little is wanting but the heavens should tear open, and the earth 
cleave asunder, and the mountains fall down, for that they attribute chil- 
dren to the Merciful, whereas it is not meet for God to have children. No 
one in Heaven and on earth shall approach the Merciful otherwise than 
as his servant."* . . . 

This is the first JZejrah, the first triumph of the Faith. 
But meanwhile Mohammed himself had recanted, aposta- 

* Compare above, p. 324. 



352 APPENDIX. 

tized — twice. While the small band were proclaiming the 
purity of his Revelation before the Negus of Abyssinia, 
Mohammed had gone to the Kaaba, and in his sorely em- 
bittered state of mind, finding himself alienated from 
every body, in the midst of an absolutely hopeless, almost 
single-handed struggle, invoked, before the assembled 
Koreish, their three popular idols — "the sublime swans," 
whose intercession might be sought. The Assembly were 
delighted, and, though they despised his feebleness, they 
yet wished to put an end to the unseemly strife, and 
forthwith declared their readiness to believe in his doc- 
trine, since it embraced the worship of their ancient gods. 
But on the day following Mohammed publicly rescinded 
that declaration. " The devil had prompted him," he de- 
clared boldly, and bitterer waxed the feud than before. 
But his mind was, as we said, in a sorely vexed state at 
that time. He was low-spirited, nervous, full of fear, and 
he was still ready to make concessions. To escape abuse 
he at about the same period declared that he had been 
commanded to permit the continuation of sacrifices to the 
idols ; and then he repented again, and verses expressive 
of his contrition at his momentary weakness came and 
comforted him in the midst of the new troubles caused by 
his recantation. At that time it was also that oreat com- 
fort came to him in the conversion of those two: Hamza, 
called the Lion of God, and Omar, the Paul of Islam, whi- 
lom Mohammed's bitterest adversary, who had entered 
the house of Mohammed girded with his sword, resolved 



islam. 353 

on slaying him, and who returned a Moslem — the most 
zealous apostle of the faith, its most valiant defender 
and mainstay. Among the twelve of whom we spoke, 
Abu Bakr and Hamza became the principal heads and 
mainsprings of young Islam. 

And now the breach in the clan was completed. The 
whole family of Mohammed, the Hashimites, were excom- 
municated. Great hardships ensued for both sides for 
the space of three years, until when both were anxious 
to remove the excommunication, the document itself was 
found to have been destroyed by worms — all but the 
name of God with which it commenced. While thus, on 
the one hand, Mohammed's star seemed in the ascendant, 
he having forced, if not recognition, at any rate tolera- 
tion, a bitter grief befell him. Chadija, sixty-five years of 
age, died ; shortly after, his protector, Abu Talib ; and, as 
if to fill the cup of his misery, he now became aware also 
that he was a beggar. As long as Chadija lived she pro- 
vided for him, leaving him to believe in his prosperity. 
For he was chiefly occupied with his Revelations, and 
with going about preaching to the caravans, the pilgrims, 
the people, at the fairs. And behind him went his other 
uncle, like a grim shadow ; and when he exhorted the 
people to repeat after him, " There is no God but Allah," 
and promised that they would all be kings if they did — 
as indeed they became — Abu Lahab, " the squinter," with 
his two black side-curls, would mock at him, call him a 
liar and a Sabian. And the people mocked after him, and 



354 APPENDIX, 

drove him away, and said, " Surely your own kinsfolk must 
know best what sort of a prophet you be." This Abu La- 
hab now had to stand forward, and as kinsman to take 
upon himself the galling charge of protecting Mohammed, 
whom he loathed. Abu Talib had resisted on his death- 
bed the entreaties both of Mohammed and of the Koreish 
— the one trying to induce him to embrace Islam, the oth- 
ers to give up his nephew. He did neither, and thus left 
the matter where it was. But Mohammed felt the awk- 
wardness and danger of his position as the protected of his 
great foe very keenly, and he resolved to turn away from 
the place of his birth, even as Abraham had done, and Mo- 
ses, and other prophets, and try to gain a hearing else- 
where. He accordingly went to Tayif, within three days' 
journey of Mecca; but he was unsuccessful. They hinted 
that his life would not be safe among them. The rabble 
hooted and pelted him with stones. He returned with a 
sad heart. On his road he stopped, and preached. And 
as whilom the stones had said Amen to the blind Saint's 
sermon, so now, legend says, the Jin listened to his words, 
as men would not hear him. And when Zaid, who went 
with him, asked him how he dared to return to the Ko- 
reish, he replied, " God will find means to protect his re- 
ligion and his prophet.'* 

And in the midst of these vicissitudes the event hap- 
pened without which Mohammedanism would never have 
been heard of, save as one of the thousand outbreaks of 
sectarianism. 



islam. 355 

Medina, then Yathrib, was inhabited by a great number 
of Jews. They had, as mentioned before, an academy, 
■where both Halachah and Haggadah were expounded, 
though very unostentatiously. They lived in peace and 
friendship with their neighbors, but had often religious 
conversations with them, in which the idolaters fared 
badly enough. With keenness of intellect, with sudden 
sparks of esprit, with all the arts of casuistry, they showed 
them the inauity of their form of belief. They further, 
as the keepers of holy books, told them such legends and 
tales about their common ancestor Abraham, their com- 
mon kinsman Ishmael, and all that befell those before and 
those after them, that their imagination was kindled, their 
heart moved, their intellect fired, and that secretly they 
could not but agree to the mental and religious superior- 
ity of these their neighbors. But their Arab pride would 
not yield ; and when they openly denied this superiority 
of Faith, the Jews would tell them that their Messiah 
would come and punish them for their unbelief, even as 
the unbelief of the legendary aborigines who had lived 
there before them had been punished. 

When the few pilgrims who had patiently listened to 
Mohammed, at his many preachings, brought back the 
strange tidings to Medina that a certain man of good 
family had publicly renounced the old gods, and had 
spoken of the God of Abraham, and of his mission to con- 
vert his brethren to him — not a Jew, not preaching Juda- 
ism, but an Arab, a Gentile like themselves, a man of 



356 APPENDIX. 

their own kith and kin, a man who had gradually ac- 
quired a certain position and following in spite of all at- 
tacks and hinderances — it struck some of the advanced 
and far-seeing men of that city that this was an opportu- 
nity not to be lost. If their people, " in whom more dis- 
sension was to be found than in any other on the face of 
the earth," could be united by one pure faith, which was 
emphatically their own, and which, though acknowledg- 
ing some of the fundamental truths of Judaism, did not 
acknowledge Judaism itself, it would be a vast achieve- 
ment ; and if, further, they would acknowledge the com- 
ing man, the Messiah, with whom they had been threat- 
ened by the Jews, before even these knew of him, they 
would gain a doubly brilliant victory. And they went 
to Mohammed secretly as a deputation, and told him that 
if he were capable of creating that union, religious and 
political, which was needed, they would acknowledge him 
to be the foretold prophet, and " the greatest man that 
ever lived." 

Mohammed then recited to them a brief summary of 
the commandments — to worship but One God, not to 
steal, not to commit adultery, not to kill their children, 
not to slander, and to obey his authority in things " right 
and just," which they repeated after him. This is called 
the women's vow, because the same points were after- 
ward repeated for the benefit of the women in the Koran, 
and because there was no mention of fighting for the 
faith in this formula. 



islam. 357 

Shortly after this a solemn and secret compact was en- 
tered into between another influential deputation from 
Medina and himself: in the stillness of night, "so that 
the sleeper should not be awakened, and the absent not 
be w T aited for." Here he more fully declared his faith. 
There are, he told them, many forms of Islam or Mono- 
theism ; and each takes a different kind of worship or 
outer garment. The real points consist of the belief in 
the Resurrection, in the Day of Judgment, and, above 
all, unconditional faith in one only God, Allah, unto whom 
utter submission is due, and who alone is to be feared 
and worshiped. Other essential points are consistency 
in misfortune, prayer, and charity. 

Whereupon they swore allegiance into his hands. This 
over, he selected twelve men among them — Jesus had 
chosen twelve Apostles, and Moses his elders of the tribes 
of Israel, he said — and exhorted those who had not been 
chosen not to be angry in their hearts, inasmuch as not 
he but Gabriel had determined the choice. These were 
the twelve "Bishops" (ISTakib), while the other men of 
Medina are called " Aids " (Ansar). 

Secretly as these things had been done, they soon be- 
came known in Mecca, and now not a moment was to be 
lost. The Koreish could no longer brook this ; Moham- 
med's folly had become dangerous. And about one hun- 
dred families of influence in Mecca, who believed in the 
Prophet, silently disappeared, by twos and threes and 
fours, and went to Medina, where they were received 



358 APPENDIX. 

with enthusiasm. Entire quarters of the city thus be- 
came deserted, and Otba, at the sight of these vacant 
abodes, once teeming with life, " sighed heavily," and re- 
cited the old verse : " Every dwelling-place, even if it 
have been blessed ever so long, at last will become a prey 
to wind and woe." . . . "And," he bitterly added, "all 
this is the work of our noble nephew, who hath scattered 
our assemblies, ruined our affairs, and created dissension 
among us." The position now grew day by day more 
embarrassing:. A blow had to be struck. Still Mohara- 
med was in Mecca — he, Ali, and Abu Bakr. An assembly 
of the Koreish met in all dispatch at the town-hall, and 
some chiefs of other clans were invited to attend. The 
matter had become a question for the commonwealth, not 
for a tribe. — And the Devil also came, according to the 
legend, in the guise of a venerable sheikh. Stormy was 
the meeting, for the men began to be afraid. Imprison- 
ment for life, perpetual exile, and finally death, were pro- 
posed. It is for this that Satan is wanted by the legend. 
No Arab would have counseled death for Mohammed. 
The last proposal was accepted ; its execution deferred 
to the first dark night. A number of noble youths were 
to do the bloody deed. Meanwhile they watched his 
house to prevent his escape. ^ 

But meanwhile, also, " the angel Gabriel " had told Mo- 
hammed what his enemies had planned against him. And 
he put his own green garment upon Ali, bade him lie on 
his own bed, and escaped, as David had escaped, through 



islam. 359 

the window. A price was set upon his head. Abu Bakr, 
the " sole companion," was with him. They hid in a cave 
in the direction opposite from that leading to Medina, on 
Mount Thaur. A spider wove his web over the mouth of 
the cave, relate the traditions. Be it observed, by the 
way, that even this spider and web belong to the Hagga- 
dab,, and are found in the Targum to the ninety-fifth 
Psalm, where David is, by these means, hidden from his 
enemies. Two wild pigeons laid their eggs at the en- 
trance of the cave, so that the pursuers w 7 ere convinced 
that none could have entered it for many a long day ; 
and the pigeons were blessed ever after, and made sacred 
within the Holy Territory. Once or twice danger was 
nigh, and Abu Bakr began to fear. " They were but 
two," he said. " Nay," Mohammed said, " we are three ; 
God is with us." And he was with them. It was a hot 
day in September, 622, when Mohammed entered Yath- 
rib, from that time forth honored by the name of Medinat 
An-Nabi, the City of the Prophet, at noon — ten, thirteen, 
or fifteen years (the traditions vary) after his assumption 
of the sacred office. This is the Hejrah, or the Moham- 
medan Era, w T hich dates from the first month of the first 
lunar year after the Prophet's entry into the city. A Jew 
watching on a tower espied him first, in order that there 
might be fulfilled the words of the Koran, "The Jews 
know him better than they know their own children." 
Before entering the gate he alighted from his camel and 
prayed. 



360 APPENDIX. 

From that time forth Mohammed's life, hitherto ob- 
scure and dark, stands out in its minutest details. He 
now is judge, lawgiver, king ; even to the day of his 
death. We shall leave our readers to follow out the 
minutiae of his life in any of the biographies at their hand, 
w T hich, from this period forth, no longer differ in any es- 
sential point. , 

But here we turn at once to that period of his open dis- 
sensions with the Jews, who, as we have said, formed a 
very influential section at Medina. He had by degrees 
come to sanction and adopt as much of their dogmas, 
their legends, their ceremonies, as ever was compatible 
with his mission as a Prophet of the Arabs, and one who, 
barring the fundamental dogma of the Sonship, wished to 
conciliate also the Christians. He constantly refers to 
the testimony of the Jews, calls them the first receivers 
of the Law, and not merely in such matters as turning in 
prayer toward Jerusalem, instead of the national sanctu- 
ary, the Kaaba, he had followed them — nay, at Medina he 
even adopted the Day of Atonement, date, name, and all. 
All he wanted in return was that they should acknowl- 
edge him as the Prophet of the Gentiles (Ummi), and tes- 
tify to his mission. But the veil had been suddenly torn 
from the eyes of these Jews. If they had thought him a 
meet instrument to convert all Arabia to Judaism, and 
had eagerly fostered and encouraged him, had instructed 
him in law and legend, and had caused him to believe in 
himself and his mission, they of a sudden became aware 



ISLAM. 361 

that their supposed tool had become a thing of evergrow- 
ing power ; and the} 7 had recourse to the most dangerous 
arms imaginable for laying that ghost w r hich they had 
helped to raise. They laughed at him publicly. They 
told stories of how he came by his " Revelations." They 
w r ho had been so anxious to inure him into the Midrash, 
challenged him by silly questions on Haggadistic lore — 
to which he was imprudent enough to give serious re- 
plies — to prove his Messiahship, with which they un- 
ceasingly taunted him. They produced the Bible, and 
showed how different the tales he told of the patriarchs 
and others were from those contained in that book : they 
who had begotten this Haggadistic guise themselves. Of 
course the stories did not aoree, and even Christians 
(Omayyah and others) testified to that fact. What re- 
mained for Mohammed but to declare that in those in- 
stances both Jews and Christians had falsified their 
books ? or that they did not understand them — applying 
to them the rabbinical designation of certain scholars : 
that though they had the books, they were but " as asses 
laden with them," and comprehended not their contents ; 
or that they gave out foolish stories to be the Book itself. 
He now declared that, " of all men, Jews and Idolaters 
hate the Moslems most." And, in truth, when asked 
whether they preferred Mohammed's teaching or idol- 
atry, they would reply — as their ancestors had done 
centuries before — " Idolatry, since idolaters did not 
know any better, while there were those who knowingly 

Q 



362 APPENDIX. 

perverted the pure doctrine, and sowed strife and dissen- 
sion between Israel and their Father w T hich is in Heaven." 
Some Jewish fanatics even attempted his life — one, in- 
nocently enough, by witchcraft ; another by the more 
earnest missile of a stone. They wrote satires and squibs 
upon him, men and women. There was no end to their 
provocations. They mispronounced his Koranic words 
— "twisting their tongues" — so as to give them an of- 
fensive meaning. Their "look down upon us" sounded 
like "Oh, our wicked one." For "forgiveness" they 
said " sin ;" for " peace upon thee," " contempt upon 
thee," and the like. They mocked at his expression of 
" giving God a good loan " — " we being rich and he 
poor 1" they said — evidently forgetting the similar ex- 
pressions of the Mishnah itself, which speaks of certain 
s;ood deeds* as brinonn^ interest in this world, while the 
capital is reserved for the next. And the inevitable hap- 
pened. The breach came to pass, and there was hatred 
even unto death on both sides. It was too late to sub- 
stitute another faith, other doctrines, other legends, even 
had they been at hand. But as much as could be done 
without endangering the whole structure, to show the 
irreconcilable breach, was done now. The faithful were 
no longer to turn their faces toward Jerusalem, but to- 
ward Mecca. Friday w T as made the day of rest, and the 

* Such as reverence for father and mother, charity, early application to 
study, hospitality, doing the last honors to the dead, promoting peace be- 
tween man and his neighbor. 



islam. 363 

call to prayer was introduced as a supposed protest 
against the trumpet of the synagogue, though the. trum- 
pet was scarcely ever used for the purpose of the call to 
prayer. The Jews were not to be saluted in the streets ; 
the Faithful were to abstain from eating with them ; they 
are declared beyond the pale — and bitterly had they to 
rue their lost game. 

In the first year of the Hejrah Mohammed proclaimed 
war against the enemies of the faith. At Badr the Mos- 
lems first stood face to face with the Meccans, and routed 
them, though but 316 against 600. The Koreish and cer- 
tain Jewish tribes were the next object of warfare. Six 
years after the Flight he proclaimed a general pilgrim- 
age to Mecca. Its inhabitants, though prohibiting this, 
concluded a peace with him, whereby he was recognized 
as a belligerent, and the pilgrimage was carried out the 
very next year. Next other Jewish tribes had to feel his 
iron rod, while he nearly lost his life at the hands of a 
Jewess, another Judith, who tried to poison him ; and 
when charged with the crime, said that she had only 
wished to see whether Mohammed really was a prophet, 
and now she was convinced of it. She thus saved her 
own life; but the poison worked on, and in his dying 
hour Mohammed spoke of that poison " cutting his heart- 
strings." His missionaries now sought a larger sphere 
than Arabia. Letters were sent by him to Heraclius, to 
the Governor of Egypt, to Abyssinia, to Chosroes II., to 
Amra the Ghassanide. The latter resented this as an in- 



3Q4- APPENDIX. 

suit, executed the messenger, and the first war between 
Islam and Christianity broke out. Islam was beaten. 
Mecca at this news rose anew, threw off the mask of 
friendship, and broke the alliance. Whereupon Moham- 
med marched of a sudden 10,000 men strong upon them 
before they had time for any preparation, took Mecca by 
storm, and was publicly acknowledged chief and prophet. 
More strife and more, chiefly minor, contests followed, in 
which he was more or less victorious. In the year ten of 
the Hejrah he undertook his last solemn pilgrimage to 
Mecca with at least 40,000 Moslems, and there on Mount 
Arafat blessed them, like Moses, and repeated his last ex- 
hortations ; chiefly telling them to protect the weak, the 
poor, and the women, and to abstain from usury. 

Once again he thought of war. He planned a huge ex- 
pedition against the Greeks ; but he felt death approach- 
ing. One night, at midnight, he went to the cemetery of 
Medina, and prayed and wept upon the tombs, and asked 
God's blessing for his "companions resting in peace." 
Next day he went to the mosque as usual, ascended the 
pulpit, and commenced his exhortation with these words : 
"There was once a servant unto whom God had given 
the option of whatever worldly goods he would desire, 
or the rewards that are near God ; and he chose those 
which are near God." And Abu Bakr, hearing these 
words, w r ept and said, "May our fathers and mothers, our 
lives and our goods, be a sacrifice for you, O messenger 
of God." And the people marveled at these words. 



islam. : 365 

» 

They wist not that the Prophet spoke of his near death, 
but Abu Bakr knew. For a few more days Mohammed 
went about as usual; but terrible headaches, accompa- 
nied by feverish symptoms, soon forced him to seek rest. 
He .chose Ayisha's house, close to the mosque, and there 
took part as long as he could in public prayers. For the 
last time, he addressed the Faithful, asking them, like 
Moses, whether he had wronged any one, or whether he 
owed aught to any one. To round the story off right 
realistically, there was an imbecile present who claimed 
certain unpaid pennies; which were immediately refunded 
to him, though not without a bitter word. He then read 
passages from the Koran preparing them for his death, 
and exhorted them to keep peace among themselves. 
Never after that hour did he ascend the pulpit, says the 
tradition, " till the dav of the Resurrection." Whether 
he intended to appoint a successor — Mosaylima, perhaps, 
the pseudo-prophet, as Sprenger suggests — or not, must 
always remain a mystery. It is well known that the 
writing-materials for which he had asked were not given 
to him. Perhaps they did think him delirious, as they 
said. Some medicine was given to him, accompanied by 
certain superstitious rites and formulas. He protested 
with horror when he became aware of this. He wander- 
ed; somewhat of heaven and angels were his last words 
— "Denizens of Heaven . . . Sons of Abraham . . . proph- 
ets . . . they fall down, weeping, glorifying His Majes- 
ty . . ." Ayisha, in whose lap his head rested, felt it grow- 



366 APPENDIX. 

ing heavy and heavier ; she looked into his face, saw his 
eyes gazing upward, and heard him murmuring: " No, the 
companions above ... in Paradise." She then took his 
hand in hers, praying. When she let it sink, it was cold 
and dead. This happened about noon of Monday (12th or 
11th) of the third month in the 11th year of the Ilejrah 
(8th June, 632). Terrible was the distress which the 
news of his death caused. Many of the faithful refused 
to believe in it, and Omar confirmed them in their doubt. 
But Abu Bakr sprang forth, saying, " Whosoever among 
you has believed in Mohammed, let him know that Mo- 
hammed is dead ; but he who has believed in Moham- 
med's God, let him continue to serve him, for he is still 
alive and never dies." . . . 

We have in this succinct review of the stages through 
which Mohammed went carefully abstained from pro- 
nouncing upon him ex cathedra, from accusing or defend- 
ing him. All this has been done, and public opinion is 
at rest on the point, for instance, of his marrying many 
wives, or committing wholesale slaughter when an ex- 
ample had to be made. Also with regard to his " cun- 
ning" and " craftiness," and the rest of it. There is, Mo- 
hammedans tell us now, polygamy and massacre enough 
and to spare in the Bible, and its heroes are in nowise 
exempt from human frailties. Moreover, " far-sighted pru- 
dence and energetic action " — provided always that they 
belong to the victorious camp — are not considered very 
grave faults. But we have also abstained from adducing 



ISLAM. 367 

many Koranic passages, however tempting it was to sub- 
stitute for our own sober account the glowing words of 
"inspiration" — the cry out of the depths of an intensely 
human heart in its sore agony — the wail over the peace 
that is lost — the exultant bugle-call that proclaims the 
God-given triumph — the yell of revenge or the silent an- 
guish, and the unheard, the unseen tear of a man. These 
things do indeed write a more faithful biography than 
the acutest historian will ever compile out of the infinite 
and infinitesimal mosaics at his disposal 

Mohammed has had many biographers, from the Byzan- 
tines, who could not satisfy their souls with heaping up 
mountains of silly abuse, from Maracci and Prideaux — the 
former of whom has, not without some show of reason, 
been accused of being a secret believer, while the latter 
wishes to stop by his biography " the great prevailing 
infidelity in the present age," more especially as he has 
reason to fear that u wrath hath sometime gone forth 
from the Lord," and that the " Wicked One may, by some 
other such instrument, overwhelm us with foulest de- 
lusions" — to those great authorities, Sprenger, Muir, 
Noldeke, Weil, Amari. The work of the first of these 
we have placed at the head of our paper, because it is the 
most comprehensive, the most exhaustive, the most learn- 
ed of all ; because, more than any of the others, it does, by 
bringing all the material bodily before the reader, enable 
him to form his own judgment. Next to him in fullness 
and genuineness of matter, though not in genius, perhaps, 



368 APPENDIX. 

stands, to our thinking, Muir ; only that a certain precon- 
ceived notion anent Satan seems to have taken somewhat 
too firm a hold upon his mind. Both Muir and Sprenger 
have drunk out of the fullness of the East in the East, 
spending part of their lives in research on Indian and 
Mohammedan soil. Weil, Amari, Noldeke have earned 
the first places among Koranic investigators in Europe; 
while Lane, that most illustrious master of Arab lexicog- 
raphy, has, both in his classical Notes on the "Arabian 
Nights" and in his "Modern Egyptians," thrown out 
most precious hints on the subject. And those that have 
written his life have all written it out of his book, the 
Koran, and its complement the Sunnah, and each has 
written it differently. 

The Koran is a wonderful book in many respects, but 
chiefly in this, that it has no real beginning, middle, or 
end. Mohammed's mind is best portrayed here. It was 
not a well-regulated mind. Weil, in touching terms, al- 
most appeals to the shadow of Mohammed to come and 
enlighten him as to what he said, when he said it, how he 
said it. He can not forgive him, he states at the com- 
mencement of his " Introduction," that he did not put 
every thing clearly and properly in order before his death 
— even as a man sends his " copy " to the printers. From 
date-leaves and tablets of white stone, from shoulder-bones 
and bits of parchment, thrown promiscuously into a box, 
and from u the breasts of men," was the first edition of 
the Koran prepared one year after the prophet's death, 



islam. 369 

and the single chapters were arranged according to their 
respective lengths : organ-pipe fashion — and not even that 
accurately. And Mohammed's book is not even as the 
Pentateuch, according to the Documentary Theory. There 
are not several accounts of the same or different events 
vaguely put together. Nor is it even like the Talmud, 
which, though apparently leading us by the Ariadne- 
thread of the Mishuah through its labyrinths, yet every 
now and then plunges us into pathless wildernesses of 
cave and vault; through which ever and anon streams in 
the golden light of day, showing the wise aim and plan 
of their tortuous windings. But in the Koranic structure 
there is no cunning, no special purpose; and, indeed, you 
may begin at every page and end at every page, unless 
one should prefer to read it from beginning to end — and 
we warrant that, as it now stands, no one will easily per- 
form that feat, unless he be a pious Moslem, of, perchance, 
makes it his Arabic text-book. Hence also not one of 
these savans agrees about the succession of the chapters. 
There is certainly a vast amount of truth or probability 
on the "side of some suggestions ; and Sprenger has, to 
our mind, come nearest, because he was the least fettered 
by conventionalities of view, Lut, son of the Alps and of 
the Desert, he set authority at defiance and sought out 
his path for himself. Yet with him, too, it is difficult to 
agree at times, according to the greater or less sympathy 
one feels with his stand-point, and the view he takes of 
the Prophet himself. 

Q 2 



370 APPENDIX. 

Broadly speaking, three principal divisions may, with 
psychological truth, be established ; the first, correspond- 
ing to the period of early struggles, being marked by the 
higher poetical flight, by the deeper appreciation of the 
beauties of nature, in sudden, most passionate, lava-like 
outbursts, which seem scarcely to articulate themselves 
into words. The more prosaic and didactic tone warns us 
of the approach of manhood, while the dogmatizing, the 
sermonizing, the reiteration, and the abandoning of all 
Scriptural and Haggadistic helpmates point to the secure 
possession of power, to the consummation and completion 
of the mission. But these divisions must not be relied upon 
too securely. There rings through what may fairly be con- 
sidered some of the very last Revelations ever and anon 
the old wild cry of doubt and despair; the sermon turns ab- 
ruptly into a glowing vision ; a sudden rhapsody inappro- 
priately follows a small dogmatic disquisition, or a curse, 
fiery and yelling as any of the hottest days, is hurled upon 
some unbeliever's doomed head ; while the very first ut- 
terances at times exhibit the theorizing, reflecting, arguing 
tendencies of ripe old age. 

And it is exactly in these transitions, quick and sudden 
as lightning, that one of the great charms of the book, as 
it now stands, consists : well might Goethe say that " as 
often as we approach it, it always proves repulsive anew ; 
gradually, however, it attracts, it astonishes, and, in the 
end, forces into admiration." The Koran, moreover, suf- 
fers more than any other book we could think of by a 



ISLAM. 371 

translation, however masterly. If any where, it is here 
that the summum jus summa injuria holds good. What 
makes the Talmud so particularly delightful is this pecul- 
iar fact, that whenever jurisprudence, with its thousand 
technicalities and uncouth terms, is out of the question, it 
becomes easy, translucent, and clear to the merest begin- 
ner. The pathetic naivete of its diction, and the evident 
pains it takes to make all its sayings household words, is 
something for which we can not be too grateful. Hence 
also the fact that these words in their wisdom and grace 

CD 

must needs find an echo in every true heart, if told exactly 
as they stand, without attempt to color them. The grand- 
eur of the Koran, on the other hand, consists, its contents 
apart, in its diction. We can not explain the peculiarly 
dignified, impressive, sonorous nature of Semitic sound and 
parlance ; its sesquipedalia verba, with their crowd of pre- 
fixes and affixes, each of them affirming its own position, 
while consciously bearing upon and influencing the central 
root — which they envelop like a garment of many folds, 
or as chosen courtiers move around the anointed person 
of the king. 

May be some stray reader remembers a certain thrill on 
waking suddenly in the middle of his first night on East- 
ern soil — waking, as it were, from dream into dream. For 
there came a voice, solitary, sweet, sonorous, floating from 
on high through the moonlight stillness — the voice of the 
blind Mueddin singing the Ulah, or first Call to Prayer. 
At the sound whereof many a white figure would move si- 



372 APPENDIX. 

lently on the low roofs, and not merely, like the palms and 
cypresses around, bow his head, but prostrate and bend 
his knees. And the sounds went and came — " Allahu Ak- 
bar . . . Prayer is better than sleep . . . There is no god 
but He . . . He giveth life, and He dieth not ... Oh ! thou 
Bountiful . . . Thy mercy ceaseth not . . . My sins are great, 
greater is Thy mercy ... I extol His perfection . . . Allahu 
Akbar!" — and this reader may have a vague notion of 
Arabic and Koranic sound, one which he will never forget. 
But the Koran is sui generis, though its contents be often 
but the old wine in new bottles, and its form strikingly 
resembling that of pre-Islamic poetry, which it condemns. 
It is rhythmical, rhymed, condescends to word-plays, and 
indulges — and in one place to an appalling degree — in 
refrains. As usual, the rhyme — the swaddling clothes 
of unborn thought — here too seems to run away at 
times, if not with the sense, at all events with the num- 
bers. Yet not far; only that for the sake of the soft dual 
termination certain gardens and fountains and fruits are 
doubled; while on the other hand a lofty contempt for 
this thraldom is shown by m being made to answer to », I 
to r, and so forth. Yet here, as in all these critical exoter- 
ic questions, we are treading on very dangerous ground, 
and we shall content ourselves with mentioning that there 
are at least three principal schools at variance on the very 
question whether the Koran is rhymed throughout: one 
affirming it, the other denying it, and the third taking a 
middle course. 



islam. 373 

"VVe reserve all that we have to say on the outer or crit- 
ical aspect of the Koran for the present ; the scientific 
terms on this field — rules, divisions, and subdivisions — 
most minute and manifold, and the entire Masoretic appa- 
ratus, with all the striking analogies with the correspond- 
ing Jewish labors that reveal themselves at every step. 

We turn, in preference, at once to the intrinsic portion 
of this strange book — a book by the aid of which the 
Arabs conquered a world greater than that of Alexander 
the Great, greater than that of Rome, and in as many tens 
of years as the latter had wanted hundreds to accomplish 
her conquests ; by the aid of which they, alone of all the 
Shemites, came to Europe as kings, whither the Phoenicians 
had come as tradesmen, and the Jews as fugitives or cap- 
tives ; came to Europe to hold up, together with these fu- 
gitives, the light to Humanity — they alone, while darkness 
lay around ; to raise up the wisdom and knowledge of 
Hellas from the dead, to teach philosophy, medicine, as- 
tronomy, and the golden art of song to the West as well 
as to the East, to stand at the cradle of modern science, 
and to cause us late Epigoni forever to weep over the day 
when Granada fell. 

We said that there is a great likeness between pre-Is- 
lamic poetry (even that of those inane " priests ") and the 
Koran. If Mohammed wished to go straight to the heart 
of his people, it could only be through the hallowed means 
of poetry — the sole vehicle of all their " science," all tradi- 
tion, all religion, all love, and all hatred. And, indeed, 



374 APPENDIX. 

what has remained of fragments of that period of pre-Is- 
lamic poetry which immediately preceded Mohammed — 
broken, defaced, dimmed, as it is, by fanaticism and pedant- 
ic ignorance — prove it sufficiently to have been of all the 
brilliant periods of Arabic literature the most brilliant. 
There arises out of the Hamasa, the Moallakat, the Kitab, 
Al-Aghani, nay, out of the very chips that lie embedded in 
later works, such a freshness and glory and bloom of des- 
ert-song — even as out of Homer's epics rise the glowing 
spring-times of humanity and the deep blue heavens of 
Hellas — as has never again been the portion of Arab po- 
etry. Wild and vast and monotonous as the yellow seas 
of its desert solitudes, it is withal tender, true, pathetic, 
soul-subduing ; much more so than when in beauteous An- 
dalus the great-grandchildren of these wild rovers sang of 
nightly boatings by torchlight, of the moon's rays trem- 
bling on the waves, of sweet meetings in the depths of rose- 
gardens, of Spain's golden cities and gleaming mosques, 
and the far-away burning desert whence their fathers came. 
Those grand accents of joy and sorrow, of love and valor 
and passion, of which but faint echoes strike on our ears 
now, were full-toned at the time of Mohammed ; and he 
had not merely to rival the illustrious of the illustrious, 
but to excel them ; to appeal to the superiority of what he 
said and sang as a very sign and proof of his mission. 
And there were, at first, many and sinister tokens of rival- 
ry and professional hatred visible, to which religious fanat- 
icism carried fuel. Those that had fallen fighting against 



islam. 375 

him were lamented over in the most heartrending and 
popular dirges. Poets of his time said, even as Jehuda Al- 
Hassan-Halevi, that great Hebrseo-Arabic minstrel, did hun- 
dreds of years after them, that they failed to see any thing 
extraordinary in his verses. Nay, they callqd him names 
— a fool, a madman, a ridiculous pretender and impostor ; 
they laughed at the people of Medina for listening to 
" such a one." And these rival poets formed a formidable 
power. Their squibs told, while the counter-satires he 
caused to be written fell flat. Not even " sudden visita- 
tions," by which some of the worst offenders were found 
struck to death, stopped the " press." Until there came a 
revelation — "Shall I declare unto you," he asks in the 
Sura called " the Poets," " on whom the devils descend ? 
They descend upon every lying and wicked person . . . most 
of them are liars. And those who err follow the steps of 
the poets. Seest thou not how they rove as bereft of their 
senses through every valley ?" . . . Which reminds us 
strikingly of Kutayir, a pre-Islamic poet, and the answer 
he gave to people asking him "How he managed when 
poetry became difficult to him?" and he said, "I walk 
through the deserted habitations and through the bloom- 
ing greenswards ; then the most perfect songs become easy, 
and the most beautiful ones flow naturally " — " roving be- 
reft of his senses through every valley !" . . . 

Mohammed is said to have convinced a rival, Lebid, a 
poet-laureate of the period, of his mission by reciting to 
him a portion of the now second Sura. Unquestionably 



376 APPENDIX. 

it is one of the very grandest specimens of Koranic or 
Arabic diction, describing how hypocrites " are like unto 
those who kindle a fire without, and think themselves safe 
from darkness. But while it is at its biggest blaze, God 
sends a win/i ; the flame is extinguished, and they are 
shrouded in dense night. They are deaf and dumb and 
blind. ... Or when in darkness, and, amid thunder and 
lightning, rain-filled clouds pour from heaven, they in ter- 
ror of the crash thrust their fingers into their ears. . . . 
But God compasseth the infidels around. . . . The flash 
of the lightning blindeth their eyes — while it lights up 
all things, they walk in its light — then darkness closes in 
upon them, and they stand rooted to the ground." 

But even descriptions of this kind, grand as they be in 
their own tongue, are not sufficient to kindle and preserve 
the enthusiasm and the faith and the hope of a nation like 
the Arabs, not for one generation, but for a thousand. 
Not the most passionate grandeur, not the most strik- 
ing similes, not the legends, not the parables, not the 
sweet spell of rhyme- fall and the weaving of rhythmic 
melodies, and all the poet's cunning craft — but the kernel 
of it all, the doctrine, the positive, clear, distinct doctrine. 
And this doctrine Mohammed brought before them in a 
thousand, so to say, symphonic variations, modulated 
through the whole scale of human feeling. From pray- 
er to curse, from despair to exultant joy, from argu- 
ment, often casuistic, largely spun-out argument, to vis- 
ion, either in swift and sudden and terrible transition, or 



islam. 377 

in repetitions and reiterations — monotonous and dreary 
and insufferably tedious to the outsider, but to him 
alone. 

The poets before him had sung of love. One of the 
principal forms of pre-Islamic poetry was, indeed, the Ka- 
sida, which almost invariably commenced with a sorrow- 
ful remembrance of her who had gone none knew whither, 
and the very traces of whose tent, but yesterday gleam- 
ing afar in the midst of the wide solitudes, had disappear- 
ed overnight. Antara, himself the hero of the most fa- 
mous novel, sings of the ruins, around which ever hover 
lovers' thoughts, of the dwelling of Abla, who is gone, and 
her dwelling-place knows her not ; it is now desolate and 
silent. Amr Al-Kais, " the standard-bearer of poets, but 
on the w T ay to hell," as Mohammed called him, of all 
things praises his fortune with women, chiefly Oneisa, 
and in brilliant, often Heinesque, verse sings of the good 
things of this world ; until his father banishes him on ac- 
count of an adventure wherein he, as usual, had been too 
happy. And of a sudden, in the midst of a wild revel, he 
hears that his father has been slain, and not a word said 
he. But higher and louder waxed the revel, and he drank 
deep, and gamed till the gray dawn; when he arose of a 
sudden, and swore a holy oath that neither wine nor wom- 
an should soothe his senses until he had taken bloody 
vengeance for his father; and when, consulting the oracle, 
he drew an arrow with the inscription "Defense," he threw 
it into the idol's face, saying, "Wretch, if thy father had 



378 APPENDIX. 

been killed, thou wouldst have counseled Vengeance, not 
Defense." 

They sang of valor and generosity, of love and strife 
and revenge, of their noble tribe and ancestors, of beauti- 
ful women, "often even of those who did not exist, so that 
woman's noble fame should be spread abroad among kings 
and princes," as the unavoidable scholiast informs us ; of 
the valiant sword, and the swift camel, and the darling 
horse, fleeter than the whirlwind's rush. Or of early 
graves, upon which weeps the morning's cloud, and the 
fleeting nature of life, which comes and o-oes as the waves 
of the desert sand, and as the tents of a caravan, as a flow- 
er that shoots up and dies away — while the white stars 
will rise and set everlastingly, and the mountains will 
rear their heads heavenward, and never grow old. Or 
they shoot their bitter arrows of satire right into the en- 
emy's own soul. 

Mohammed sang none of these. No love-minstrelsy his, 
not the joys of this world, nor sword nor camel, nor jeal- 
ousy or human vengeance, not the glories of tribe or ances- 
tor, nor the unmeaning, swiftly, and forever extinguished 
existence of man, were his themes. He preached Islam. 

And he preached it by rending the skies above and 
tearing open the ground below, by adjuring heaven and 
hell, the living and the dead. The Arabs have ever been 
proficient in the art of swearing, but such swearing had 
never been heard in and out of Arabia. By the foaming 
waters and by the grim darkness, by the flaming sun and 



islam. 379 

the setting stars, by Mount Sinai and by Him who spanned 
the firmament, by the human soul and the small voice, by 
the Kaaba and by the Book, by the Moon and the dawn 
and the angels, by the ten nights of dread mystery and by 
the day of judgment. That day of judgment, at the ap- 
proach whereof the earth shaketh, and the mountains are 
scattered into dust, and the seas blaze up in fire, and the 
children's hair grows white with anguish, and like locust- 
swarms the souls arise out of their graves, and Allah cries 
to Hell, Art thou filled full? and Hell cries to Allah, More, 
give me more ; . . . while Paradise opens its blissful gates 
to the righteous, and glory ineffable awaits them — both 
men and women. 

The kernel and doctrine of Islam Goethe has found in / 
the second Sura, which begins as follows: 

" This is the Book. There is no doubt in the same. A Guidance to 
the righteous. Who believe in the Unseen, who observe the Prayer, and 
who give Alms of that which we have vouchsafed unto them. And who 
believe in that which has been sent down unto thee — (the Revelation) — 
which had been sent down to those before thee, and who believe in the 
Life to come. They walk in the guidance of their Lord, and they are 
the blessed. As to them who believe not — it is indifferent to them wheth- 
er thou exhortest them or not exhortest them. They will not believe. 
Sealed hath Allah their hearts and their ears, and over their eyes is dark- 
ness, and theirs will be a great punishment. — 'And in this wise,' Goethe 
continues, ' we have Sura after Sura, Belief and unbelief are divided 
into upper and lower. Heaven and hell await the believers or deniers. 
Detailed injunctions of things allowed and forbidden, legendary stories of 
Jewish and Christian religion, amplifications of all kinds, boundless tau- X 
tologies and repetitions, form the body of this sacred volume, which to us, 
as often as we approach it, is repellent anew, next attracts us ever anew, 
and fills us with admiration, and finally forces us into veneration.' ' 



380 APPENDIX. 

Thus Goethe. And no doubt the passage adduced is as 
good a summary as any other. Perhaps, if he had gone a 
little further in this same chapter, he might have found 
one still more explicit. When Mohammed at Medina told 
his adherents no longer to turn in prayer toward Jerusa- 
lem, but toward the Kaaba at Mecca, to which their fa- 
thers had turned, and he was blamed for this innovation, 
he replied : 

* ' That is not righteousness : whether ye turn your faces toward East 
or West, God's is the East as well as the West. But verily righteousness 
is his who believes in God, in the day of judgment, in the angels, in the 
Book and the prophets ; who bestows his wealth, for God's sake, upon 
kindred, and orphans, and the poor, and the homeless, and all those who 
ask ; and also upon delivering the captives ; he who is steadfast in prayer, 
giveth alms, who stands firmly by his covenants when he has once entered 
into them ; and who is patient in adversity, in hardship, and in times of 
trial. These are the righteous, and these are the God-fearing." 

Yet these and similar passages, characteristic as they be, 
do not suffice. It behooves us to look somewhat deeper. 

First of all, What is the literal meaning of Islam, the 
religion of a Moslem ? We find that name Moslem already 
applied to those Ilanifs, of whom we have spoken above, 
who had renounced, though secretly, idolatry before Mo- 
hammed, and had gone out to seek the "religion of Abra- 
ham," which Mohammed finally undertook to re-establish. 
The Semitic root of the word Moslem yields a variety of 
meanings, and accordingly Moslem has had many inter- 
pretations. But in all these cases — even as is now be- 
coming so universally clear in the terms of the New Tes- 



ISLAM. 381 

tament — it is as useless to go back to the original root 
for the elucidation of some special or technical, dogmatic, 
scientific, or other term of a certain period, as it is to ask 
those for an explanation who lived to use that same term 
long after it had assumed an utterly new, often the very 
opposite, meaning. Salm, the root of Islam, means, in the 
first instance, to be tranquil, at rest, to have done one's duty, 
to have paid up, to be at perfect peace, and, finally, to 
hand one's self over to Him with whom peace is made. 
The noun derived from it means peace, greeting, safety, 
salvation. And the Talmud contains both the term and 
the explanation of the term Moslem, which in its Chaldee 
meaning had become naturalized in Arabia. It indicates 
a "Righteous Man." In a paraphrase of Proverbs xxiv., 
16, where the original has Zadik (Ziddik in Koran), which 
is rightly translated by the Authorized Version, "Just 
Man," the Talmud has this very word. "Seven pits are 
laid for the c Moslem'" (Shalmana — Syr., Msalmono), it 
says, and " one for the wicked, but the wicked falls into 
his one, while the other escapes all seven."* The word 
thus implies absolute submission to God's will — as gen- 
erally assumed — neither in the first instance, nor exclu- 
sively, but means, on the contrary, one who strives after 
righteousness with his own strength. Closely connected 



* There is also the story in the Talmud of the Master whose name was 
Shalman (Solomon) ; and they said to him, " Thou art full of peace, and 
thy teaching is peace [perfect], and thou hast made peace between the 
disciples." 



382 APPENDIX. 

with the misapprehension of this part of Mohammed's 
original doctrine is also the popular notion on that sup- 
posed bane of Islam, Fatalism ; but we must content our- 
selves here with the observation that, as far as Moham- 
med and the Koran are concerned, Fatalism is an utter 
and absolute invention. Not once, but repeatedly, and 
as if to guard against such an assumption, Mohammed 
denies it as distinctly as he can, and gives injunctions 
which show as indisputably as can be that nothing was 
further from his mind than that pious state of idle and 
hopeless inanity and stagnation. But to return to Islam. 
The real sum and substance of it is contained in Moham- 
med's words : " We have spoken unto thee by revelation : 
Follow the religion of Abraham" . . . 

What did Mohammed and his contemporaries under- 
stand by this religion of Abraham ? " Abraham," says 
the Koran, pointedly and pregnantly, " was neither a Jew 
nor a Christian, but he was pious and righteous, and no 
idolater." Have we not here the briefest and the most 
rationalistic doctrine ever preached ? Curious and char- 
acteristic is the proof which the Koran finds it necessary 
to allege (partly found, by the way, in the Midrash) for 
this : There was no Law (or Gospel) revealed then — there 
were, in fact, no divisions of Semitic creed, no special and 
distinctive dogmas in Abraham's time yet. The Hag- 
gadah, it is true, points out that, when Scripture says 
"he heard my voice," it meant that to him were given, by 
anticipation, all that the Law and the Prophets contain. 



islam. 383 

And in order rightly to understand the drift of Moham- 
med's words, we must endeavor to gather the little mosa- 
ics as they lie scattered about in all directions in the Tal- 
mud and Miclrash. Perchance a picture, anent Abraham's 
faith and works, may arise under our hands — a not un- 
worthy ideal of Judaism, which formed it, and Mohammed- 
anism, which adopted it ; of Abraham, the righteous, the 
first and the greatest Moslem. It may also further eluci- 
date, by the way, the words of the Mishnah, " Be ye of 
the Disciples of Abraham." "The divine light lay hid- 
den," says the Midrash, " until Abraham came and dis- 
covered it." 

Again we have to turn — driven by absolute necessity 
— to one of those indigestible morsels, one of the many 
cruces of the exegetes of Orient and Occident. The word 
used in the Koran for the "Religion of Abraham" is gen- 
erally Milla. Sprenger, after ridiculing the indeed ab- 
surd attempts made to derive it from an Arabic root, 
concludes that it must be a foreign word, introduced by 
the teachers of the "Milla of Abraham" into the Hejaz. 
He is perfectly right. Milla =Memra= Logos, are iden- 
tical: being the Hebrew, Chaldee (Targum, Peshito in 
slightly varied spelling), and Greek terms respectively for 
" Word" — that surrogate for the divine Name used by the 
Targum, by Philo, by St. John. This Milla, or "Word," 
which Abraham proclaimed — he " who was not an astrolo- 
ger, but a prophet" — teaches, according to the Haggadah, 
first of all, the existence of One God, the Creator of the 



384 APPENDIX. 

Universe, who rules this universe with mercy and loving- 
kindness.* He alone also, neither angel nor planet, guides 
the destinies of man. Idolatry, even when combined with 
the belief in him, is utterly to be abhorred ; he alone is 
to be worshiped ; in him alone trust is to be placed in ad- 
versity. He frees the persecuted and the oppressed. You 
must pray to him and serve him in love, and not murmur 
when he asks for your lives, or even for lives still dearer 
to you than your own. As to duties toward man, it 
teaches — "Loving-kindness and mercy are the tokens of 
the faith of Abraham." "He who is not merciful is not 
of the children of Abraham." "What is the distinguish- 
ing quality of Abraham's descendants? Their compassion 
and their mercy." (Be it observed, by the way, that in 
all these Talmudical passages the word Hachman is used, 
which term for "Merciful" forms an emphatic mark in the 
Koran.) "Abraham not merely forgave Abimelech, but 



* "God," says the Talmud, in boldest transcendental flight, "prays." 
And what is that prayer? "Be it my will that my mercy overpower my 
justice." The Koran says : " God has laid down for himself the Law of 
Mercy." 

God's Mercy, says the Midrash, was the only link that held the uni- 
verse together before the " Law" came to be revealed to man. And very 
beautifully does the Haggadistic version of the manner in which the uni- 
verse, which, spite of all, would not rest firmly, but kept swaying to and 
fro in space, "even as a great palace built of mortal man, the foundations 
whereof are not firmly laid," contrast from all those well-known wild 
heapings-up of monsters begotten for steadying purposes. "The earth 
shook and trembled, and would not find rest until God created Repent- 
ance : then it stood." 






islam. 385 

he prayed for him;" and this mercy, charity, and loving- 
kindness is to be extended to every being, without ref- 
erence to " garment," birth, rank, creed, or nationality. 
Disinterestedness and unselfishness are self - understood 
duties. Though the whole land had been promised to 
Abraham by God> he bought the ground for Sarah's tomb. 
After the victorious campaign he took nothing, no, not 
even " from a thread to a shoe-latchet," from the enemy. 
Modesty and humility are other qualities enjoined by him. 
Rule yourself, he said, before you rule others. Eschew 
pride, which shortens life — modesty prolongs it. It puri- 
fies from all sins, and is the best weapon for conquest. 
His humility was shown even by the way in which he ex- 
ercised his hospitality. He himself waited on his guests ; 
and when they tried to thank him, he said, "Thank Him, 
the One who nourisheth all, who ruleth in heaven and 
earth, who killeth and giveth life, who causeth the plants 
to grow, and who createth man according to his wisdom." 
He inaugurated the Morning Prayer — even as did Isaac 
that of the Evening, and Jacob that of the Night. He 
went, even in his old age, ever restless in doing good, to 
succor the oppressed, to teach and preach to all men. He 
" wore a jewel around his neck, the light of which raised 
up the bowed-down and healed the sick, and which, aft- 
er his death, was placed among the stars. And see how 
he was chosen to be tempted with the bitterest trial, in 
order that mankind might see how steadfast he remain- 
ed — "even as the potter proves the strength of his 

R 



386 APPENDIX. 

ware, not by that which is brittle, but by that which 
is strong." And when he died, he left to his children 
four guardian angels — "Justice and Mercy, Love and 
Charity." 

Such are the floating outlines of the faith of Abraham 
to be gathered from the Haggadah ; and these traits form 
the fundamental bases of Mohammed's doctrine — often in 
the very words, always in the sense, of these Jewish tra- 
ditions. The most emphatic moment, however, we find 
laid upon the Unity of God, the absence of Intermedia- 
tors, and the repudiation of any special, exclusive, " priv- 
ileged" creed. This is a point on which the Talmud is 
very strong — not merely declaring its aversion to prose- 
lytism, but actually calling every righteous man, so that 
he be no idolater, a "Jew" to all intents and purposes. 
The tracing of the minutiae of general human ethics is, 
comparatively speaking, of less import, considering that 
these, in their outlines, are wonderfully alike, in Hellas 
and India, and Rome and Persia and Japan; so that it 
would indeed be difficult to say who first invented the 
great law of good-will toward fellow-creatures. But the 
manner and the words in which these things are incul- 
cated mark their birthplace and the stages of their jour- 
ney clearly enough in the Semitic creeds. 

And with the doctrines — if so we may call them — of 
Abraham, as we gathered them from the Jewish writings, 
Mohammed also introduced the whole legendary cycle 
that surrounds Abraham's head, like a halo, in these same 



islam. 387 

writings. We have in the Koran, first of all, that won- 
drous Haggadistic explanation how Abraham first came 
to worship, in the midst of idolaters, the one invisible God 
— how he first lifted up his eyes heavenward and saw a 
brilliant star, and said, This is God. But when the star 
paled before the brightness of the moon, he said, This is 
God. And then the sun rose, and Abraham saw God in 
the golden glory of the sun. But the sun, too, set, and 
Abraham said, " Then none of you is God ; but there is 
one above you who created both you and me. Him alone 
will I worship, the Maker of heaven and earth !" How 
he then took an axe and destroyed all the idols, and 
placed the axe in the hands of the biggest, accusing him 
of the deed ; how he is thrown into the fiery furnace, and 
God said to the fire, " Be thou cold ;" how he entertained 
the angels, and how he brought his beloved son to the 
altar, and an "excellent victim" (a ram from Paradise) 
was sacrificed in his stead ; and so on. All this, though 
only sketched in its outlines in the Koran, is absolute 
Haggadah, with scarcely as much of alteration as would 
naturally be expected in the like fantastic matter, even as 
is the rest of that " entire world of pious Biblical legend 
which Islam has said and sung in its many tongues, to the 
delight of the wise and simple, for twelve centuries now, 
to be found either in embryo or fully developed in Hag- 
gadah." 

But here, in the midst of our discourse, we are com- 
pelled to break off, reserving its continuation: notably 



388 APPENDIX. 

with regard to the theoretical and practical bearing of the 
religion of Mohammed, and the relation of its religious 
terms* and individual tenets to those of Judaism; also its 
progress and the changes wrought within the community 
by many and most daring sects; and the present aspect 
of the Faith and its general influence. And this our Ex- 
ordium we will sum up with the beginning of the Sura, 
called the Assembly, revealed at Medina : 

"In the name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate. Whatsoever 
is in heaven and on earth praises God the King, the Holy One, the Al- 
mighty, the All-wise. It is he who out of the midst of the illiterate Arabs 
has raised an Apostle to show unto them his signs, and to sanctify them, 
and to teach them the Scripture and the Wisdom, them who before had 
been in great darkness. . . . This is God's free Grace, which he giveth 
unto whomsoever he wills. God is of great Mercy !" , 



* E. g., Koran, Forkan (=Pirke, exposition of Halachah), Torah 
(Law), Shechinah (presence of God), Gan Eden (Paradise), Gehinnom 
(Hell), Haber (Master), Darash (search the Scriptures), Eabbi (teacher), 
Sabbath (day of rest), Mishnah (Oral Law), etc., all of which are bodily 
found in the Koran, as well as even such words as the Hebrew Yam (for 
Red Sea), etc. 



THE END. 



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This work embraces in one volume : 
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NORDHOFF'S CALIFORNIA. California: For Health, Pleasure, and Residence 
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HOTLEY'S UNITED NETHERLAND'S. History of the United Netherlands: from 
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MOTLEY'S LIFE AND DEATH OF JOHN OF BARNEVELD. Life and Death 
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WALLACE'S MALAY ARCHIPELAGO. The Malay Archipelago : the Land of the 
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ORTON'S ANDES AND THE AMAZON. The Andes and the Amazon ; or, Across 
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WINCHELL'S SKETCHES OF CREATION. Sketches of Creation: a Popular 
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BULWER'S KING ARTHUR. A Poem. By Earl Lytton. New Edition. 12mo, 
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GIBBON'S ROME. History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. By Ed- 
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HARPER'S NEW CLASSICAL LIBRARY. Literal Translations. 

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— Livy (2 vols.). 

DAVIS'S CARTHAGE. Carthage and her Remains : being an Account of the Exca- 
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HUME'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. History of England, from the Invasion of Ju- 
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JEFFERSON'S DOMESTIC LIFE. The Domestic Life of Thomas Jefferson : com- 
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KINGLAKE'S CRIMEAN WAR. The Invasion of the Crimea, and an Account of 
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KINGSLEY'S WEST INDIES. At Last: A Christmas in the West Indies. By 
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KRUMMACHER'S DAVID, KING OF ISRAEL. David, the King of Israel : a Por- 
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LIVINGSTONE'S SOUTH AFRICA. Missionary Travels and Researches in South 
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LIVINGSTONES* ZAMBESI. Narrative of an Expedition to the Zambesi and its 
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MARCY'S ARMY LIFE ON THE BORDER. Thirty Years of Army Life on the 
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MACAULAY'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. The History of England from the Ac- 
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MOSHEIM'S ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY, Ancient and Modern ; in which the 
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rope during that Period. Translated, with Notes, &c, by A. Maclaine, D.D. 
A new Edition, continued to 1826, by C. Coote, LL.D. 2 vols., 8vo, Cloth, $4 00. 

NEVIUS'S CHINA. China and the Chinese: a General Description of the Country 
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and Prospects. By the Rev. John L. Nevitjs, Ten Years a Missionary in China. 
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THE DESERT OF THE EXODUS. Journeys on Foot in the Wilderness of the 
Forty Years' Wanderings ; undertaken in connection with the Ordnance Survey 
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OLIPHANT'S CHINA AND JAPAN. Narrative of the Earl of Elgin's Mission to 
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OLIPHANT'S (Mrs.} LIFE OF EDWARD IRVING. The Life of Edward Irving, 
Minister of the National Scotch Church, London. Illustrated by his Journals and 
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RAWLINSON'S MANUAL OF ANCIENT HISTORY. A Manual of Ancient His- 
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Harper &* Brothers' Valuable and Interesting Works. 7 

RECLUS'S THE EARTH. The Earth : a Descriptive History of the Phenomena 
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RECLUS'S OCEAN. The Ocean, Atmosphere, and Life. Being the Second Series 
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SMILES'S LIFE OF THE STEPHENSONS. The Life of George Stephenson, and 
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SMILES'S HISTORY OF THE HUGUENOTS. The Huguenots : their Settlements, 
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SPEKE'S AFRICA. Journal of the Discovery of the Source of the Nile. By Cap- 
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STRICKLAND'S (Miss) QUEENS OF SCOTLAND. Lives of the Queens of Scot- 
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Rome. By Liddell. Engravings. 12mo, Cloth, $2 00. 

Old Testament History. Engravings. 12mo, Cloth, $2 00. 

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Strickland's Queens of England. Abridged. Engravings. 12mo, Cloth, $2 00. 

Ancient History of the East. 12mo, Cloth, $2 00. 

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THOMSON'S LAND AND THE BOOK. The Land and the Book ; or, Biblical 
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TYERMAN'S WESLEY. The Life and Times of the Rev. John Wesley, M.A., 
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